(NewsReady.com) – As the Christmas season got underway, a man in Hillsborough County, Florida, was out trolling for victims. He zeroed in on a woman in a Riverview parking lot and attacked her. But then good Samaritans came to her rescue, and one of them was just a child.
On December 4, 65-year-old Billie Richert was approached by a man in a Publix Supermarket parking lot. She told Fox 13 that the man told her to give him her car keys. She said that she refused, and that’s when he knocked her down.
Several people in the parking lot witnessed the attack, including 15-year-old Andrew Papp. The teen is a junior ROTC member at Riverview High School. He sprang to action when he saw the man attack the older woman. He ran across the parking lot to stop the attacker. Another person also jumped in a few moments later.
Reporters asked Papp why he had decided to help. He said, “It’s just the right thing to do,” saying that it might have been someone’s mother or aunt being attacked. He explained that if someone attacked his mom and got away with it, he thought that would be “terrible.”
When Papp went back to school, he reportedly didn’t even really discuss what happened in the parking lot at Publix. Riverview High Principal Brian Spiro told the student’s JROTC class that Papp saved a woman while others stood around and did nothing.
As for Richert, she was fine. She traveled to Virginia for the holidays and had the opportunity to FaceTime Papp. She and her family thanked him for helping her, and she told him, “Your mama raised a good boy.”
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department arrested 42-year-old Robert Moore in connection with the attack. He was charged with battery on a victim over 65, battery, and robbery by sudden snatching.
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