Elderly ladies fight off young robbers

Anyone who has watched the news over the last fifteen years knows by now that there is no such thing as a criminal with a heart. But yesterday afternoon, that lack of compassion hit a new low when two Belize City women with a combined age of one hundred and eighty years were subjected to the same treatment that has traditionally been reserved for Chinese shopkeepers. But guess what? This story has a happy ending. Jacqueline Woods reports.

Anselma Christiana, Victim of Attempted Robbery
?Well you couldn?t tell what they look like because one had a red shirt, one had a white shirt, and you could have only seen the eyes and they had a handkerchief over their face, you know the bandana. The one with the gun had a white kerchief, the other two one of them had a red kerchief, but then I was focusing on the one that was at the door.?

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Seventy-seven year old Anselma Christiana and one hundred and two year old Viola Myles may be well into their senior years, but three would-be robbers quickly learned that this elderly duo is as fearless as they come. Around one forty-five on Wednesday afternoon three armed masked young men entered the women?s home on Allenby Street through the back door and held them up. But instead of running away, the women stood their ground.

Anselma Christiana
?The little one pointed the gun at me by the door, so I looked at him and I said, ?What you want?? He said, ?I want what?s on the bed.? So I opened the door a little, I just slowly and then he followed me walking towards it and by the time he get?he changed the gun to the other hand, and by the time he got to the door, I see his hand in the door and I crushed the hand with the door.?

?After I crushed his hand, I had a bottle of Lighthouse, a half bottle, and threw it in his face. So when I threw it in his face, the others saw what I did and they took off and ran and then the guy jumped over the railing, he jumped over the fence, and I stoned the bottle after him.?

Viola Myles, Victim of Attempted Robbery?
?I was right in the bedroom there, but I couldn?t get to her.?

Jacqueline Woods
?I mean could you both believe what was happening??

Anselma Christiana
?No, No we just could not believe it; we thought that it was a game, like you know playing or something like that, the way they were acting. We couldn?t believe that they meant business, they meant to rob us or whatever.?

Christiana and Myles believe it is their strong faith that made them overcome evil that afternoon.

Viola Myles
?I wasn?t frightened. It takes something very serious or very hard for me to frighten. I gone to my bed last night and I slept alone.?

Anselma Christiana
?Well that is the way I am, and usually I am a very biblical person, I believe in the Lord. And I always, if I wake up at three o?clock I do my devotion at three, and I feel that I have that person?we are not alone, he is here in the midst, and that?s how I feel.?

Viola Myles
?I don?t know what to think, because I didn?t know that I would live to see such a thing happen to me, could it be, Mrs. Myers.? (Laughs)

Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

The assailants are believed to be minors who reportedly hid the gun in a neighbour’s yard, but later came back and retrieved the weapon. Meanwhile the police continue to look for their suspects.