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'Golden girls' thwart armed car hijacker
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
SATURDAY OCTOBER 20 2001 'Golden girls' thwart armed car hijacker BY HELEN STUDD THREE pensioners have been commended for their courage in thwarting an armed car hijack during a day trip to Calais. Joan Windsor, Anne Aylward and Jean Douglas, all in their seventies, wrestled a loaded gun from the man before pistol-whipping him into submission. Although he managed to drive off with their Rover leaving two of them on the kerb, the third woman left in the back seat continued to tackle him on her own. After forcing him to crash she got out of the car, put her handbag over her shoulder and, wiping the blood from her face, walked back to join her friends. The women, who refer to themselves as Golden Girls, had been on a shopping trip to the French port when they were attacked by the man as they pulled up outside a chemist's shop. He poked the gun through the window of the car and tried to grab the keys out of the ignition. Miss Douglas, from Hove, East Sussex, who was in the driver's seat, said that she "heard two clicks" from the gun as it was pointed at her head. "It was like a silent black-and-white film with no one saying anything, until one of us shouted `hit him over the head with the gun'," Mrs Aylward, from Littlehampton in West Sussex, said. Mrs Windsor, from Hove, grabbed the gun, which she later discovered was fully loaded with six bullets, and thumped him over the head with it. However, she was unable to get the power needed to knock him out from the angle at which she was sitting in the passenger seat. Despite their efforts, the gunman managed to push both of the women in the front of the car out on to the pavement and drove off with Mrs Aylward still in the back seat. She said: "He pushed hard on the accelerator and I realised that if I didn't stop him I would probably be dead. We were probably doing around 90mph when I put my arms around his neck and tried to throttle him. "I yanked his head from side to side and he eventually lost control of the car. The car swerved and crashed into a concrete flower tub at the side of the road. "I got out of the car, reached for my handbag, put it over my shoulder and tottered back towards the others with blood spurting everywhere. "I always thought I was a bit of a wimp. I don't know where my strength came from. We all just did what we had to do in the heat of the moment." Mrs Windsor said: "I got the gun so he couldn't shoot us. I then started hitting his neck with the butt, which was really heavy. I could hear Anne in the back seat, shouting `hit him Joan, hit him with the gun'." She was taken to hospital where she received several stitches to a * in her head. Miss Douglas and Mrs Windsor, who were still holding the loaded gun when gendarmes arrived, were escorted to the police station where they attempted to identify their attacker from a list of suspects. All three women, who caught the ferry home, said the incident would not prevent them from returning to Calais for future shopping trips. "This won't stop us enjoying ourselves. We are Golden Girls," Mrs Windsor said. The American sitcom The Golden Girls was a comedy based around three feisty elderly women who were determined to make the most of their later years. The Foreign Office said yesterday that British tourists had recently become the target of several robberies in the French port. Hijackings, however, are extremely rare. They commended the women for their bravery but recommended that other victims of similar attacks do not attempt to tackle their assailants without help from the French police. A spokesman for British police said that although the outcome this time was "a happy one" it could easily have been tragic. Police in Calais said last night that they were investigating the incident. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001364079,00.html
Comments
So many guns to buy. So little money.
I wouldn't mind being the last man on earth-just to see if all of those girls were telling me the truth....
My wife?.........Sure!My dog?..........Maybe!MY GUNS??........NEVER!!!