The woman surreptitiously removed her wallet from the purse before handing it over.
HOLYOKE – A quick-thinking woman, robbed of her purse at gunpoint while sitting in a car parked in back of Elizur’s Pub early Monday, surreptitiously removed her wallet before handing it over to the suspect, police said.
The armed robbery outside the pub at 874 Hampden St. was reported shortly after 12:30 a.m., Lt. Michael J. Higgins said.
The suspect, who told the woman “Don’t tell anybody I was here,” fled with the cashless purse and remains at large, Higgins said.
The woman told police she had been sitting in the passenger seat of a car parked in the pub’s rear parking lot when the suspect , wearing an over-sized, black hooded sweatshirt that partially obscured his face, approached and asked for a cigarette.
The suspect, after receiving a cigarette from the woman, stuck a small- to medium-sized pistol through the window and demanded her possessions.
“She carefully removed the wallet from her purse without him seeing,” Higgins said. When the suspect asked the woman if the purse contained any money, she replied in the negative, he said.
The suspect is described as an Hispanic male, about 6 feet tall, skinny build and a scruffy mustache, Higgins said.