Minutes after the assault:

So, Kate and I are sitting in the house with the windows wide open listening to Dixie Chicks when we heard a most peculiar sound. We sprang up to see what was the matter when we witnessed two men dragging a huge yellow metal barrier (used on our street for the road construction) to corner a man in his car from driving away. The man in the white car was reversing down the road (the wrong way) to get away from the two men with the barrier and smashed into a dumpster, cars, and finally scraped against a construction trailer before stopping. The two men ran up and started yelling at the man in the car as the man in the car was throwing the finger (yep it’s pretty universal) and then he ran the barrier off the road and took off. While this is happening there is a young girl on the corner who is on the phone talking adamantly about something (you know it was in really fast Spanish so Kate and I were like what?). So, the man in the car is on the move down a one way street the wrong way and one of the men on foot is trailing him closely. The man in the car is then cornered because there are unsuspecting drivers driving down the road the correct way. He finally gets out of his car and throws a white purse at the man trailing him (meanwhile the man on foot is screaming God knows what). While this is happening the young girl is crying on the corner and we’re watching from above along with everyone else in the neighborhood. The foot men return the purse to the crying girl who is still on the phone. We then see her act out exactly what took place to the men who helped her get her purse back. So, this is what we think happened (from her acting it out, some of the Spanish we heard, and the account we saw/heard from the baker to the cops); the young girl was on her cell phone walking down the street we live off of when she had her purse yanked off her shoulder by a crazy man who drives a small white 2 door car. We believe he jumped out of the car, since she was on the phone and not paying attention, and robbed her and then jumped in the running car and took off when the two good Samaritans ran to her rescue. They then had no way to stop the car except to use the road barriers and themselves as road blocks. All in all they got the purse back, but the asshole got away. Kate and I have decided we need to up our skills in the neighborhood watch because if we would have known who the bad guy was we could have launched something out the window to hinder his flight, but since we hadn’t a clue what the Hell was going on we did nothing but watch. You know the Po Po didn’t show up for like 20 minutes, guess it’s the same in every country! Just another night in the hood!