HOUSTON – An east side couple in their late 60s said their lives changed after armed robbers accosted them on a street near their home.
They said they don’t feel safe anymore in the place they raised their children and have lived for more than four decades.
For that reason, we’re not revealing their identities or home address.
Sunday night, they were walking near the intersection of Ceasar Chavez Boulevard and Avenue Q. They were on their way to meet their granddaughter.
A neighbor’s home security video shows a small, silver, two-door car drive past them. The car then turned around and two armed men came out.
“One had a gun, the one that assaulted me, and the other one had a shotgun and he assaulted my husband,” the woman said. “It was very scary. I'm still very scared.”
WATCH: Surveillance video of couple being robbed in east Houston
The men demanded money and when the woman told them she had none, one of them began choking her, the woman said.
“He was choking me with a gun pointed at my chest,” she said.
When her husband tried to go to her aid, the second man hit him in the head with the shotgun.
One of the men then reached down into the woman’s blouse just to be sure she wasn’t hiding anything.
"I thought OK, you know, this is it,” she said.
The robbers ran back to their car when the couple’s 12-year-old granddaughter walked up and screamed for help.
They got away with a cellphone, but they also took the family’s sense of safety in the neighborhood they’ve called home for more than 40 years.
“It changed my life completely. Right now I’m living in fear. I pray to God that I will overcome it. I will overcome it with God’s help," the woman said.
In addition to the two men who roughed up the couple, there was a third person driving the car.
Robbery detectives want to get them off the street before it happens to someone else, but they don’t have much to go on.