Woman head butted, robbed in grocery store parking lot in Cary
CARY, N.C. (WTVD) -- A Cary woman was left bloodied and bruised after a man snatched her purse Tuesday in the middle of a busy shopping center.
It happened around 4 p.m. in the Food Lion parking lot on Kildaire Farm Road in Cary.
Connie, who did not want to reveal her last name, was putting groceries in her car when she was attacked.
"I was rolling out my cart to the car. This young fella comes up to me and says 'Excuse me, ma'am', and I looked up and said 'What?' He grabs my purse, and I'm not going to give it up so I go forward to grab my purse, and he head butted me," she said.
Connie now has two black eyes and a gash on her forehead with more than 70 stitches.
"I thought he was going to ask for directions," she said.
Instead, police say 20-year-old Theo Saxton snatched her purse, knocking Connie to the ground.
"I stood back up and kind of saw him running away, and by then a lady had come over to help me, and everybody was saying what just happened," said Connie. "I was just bleeding so profusely and passed out."
Eyewitnesses chased Saxton across the busy highway into a nearby Rite-Aid where they say he locked himself in a bathroom until police arrived.
Connie's belongings were scattered in the scuffle, including $500 in cash that she planned to use on her son's wedding this weekend.
A Rite-Aid employee later found the money wadded up and stashed in store merchandise.
"Cash was the least thing on my mind," said Connie. "I didn't get shot. I didn't get stabbed, and I'm alive to be there."
Connie's home is now filled with get well flowers.
She is thankful for the help of store employees and the strangers who came to her aid.
"Between the EMS people, the citizens and the PD, I wouldn't go anywhere else," she said.
Saxton was on probation at the time of the incident according to arrest warrants.
He is charged with robbery and is in the Wake County jail on a $100,000 secured bond.
