HOUSTON – Julie doesn't want Local 2 to reveal her full name because she is still worried the man who attacked her outside of a busy, thrift store in northeast Houston will come back and kill her.
"I said, 'How dare you? What are you doing? I have nothing you need. Get away, let me go.'"
Those are the words that Julie screamed at her attacker, who was pulling her to the ground and grunting as he grabbed for her purse.
Julie was attacked last Thursday night at 7:30 as she was walking into the Family Thrift Store on Fulton Street. She went to the store to put up posters of her lost dog Henry. What surprised her and frightened her most is that the mugger was so brazen.
In bright sunlight, with her 3-year-old daughter at her side and her husband just 10 feet ahead of her, Julie said the attacker first waved at her as she walked past, then suddenly grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground, trying to grab her purse from her.
Julie said her husband had just entered the store ahead of her, and as Julie fought with all her might to push the man off of her, the strap on her purse tore. That's when she said the man began dragging her across the pavement before slamming her head into a cement pole.
"It just kills me that my little girl had to hear me fighting for my life, but I was not going to let that man just take my purse without a fight," Julie said.
Now, Julie has developed a composite sketch of the attacker using a computer program and will be turning that over to Houston police.
But that mugger is on the street walking free and Julie said she worries he will try to attack other women in the Lindale Park neighborhood where he grabbed her.
Altogether, Julie said the man got away with $30, her cellphone and a gold ring.
"That was it, and he could have killed me," she said.