‘I laid there screaming’: Grandmother distraught after vicious bag snatch

A Queensland grandmother is “too scared” to leave her home after she was injured in an attempted bag snatch at a shopping centre.

On Monday, Margaret Mulbacher, 81, was at Stockland Shopping Centre in Townsville, when she was allegedly attacked walking through the car park, 7 News reported.

Mulbacher told 7 News she was violently dragged to the ground during the vicious and unexpected attack. “Whatever it was just whizzed past me, grabbed my purse, took with me with him, then he dropped me,” Mulbacher said.

She recalled how her head hit the ground and she “laid there screaming for somebody to help”. “I couldn’t be any sorer than what I am,” Mulbacher said.

A Townsville grandmother has shared her heart-wrenching story after she was injured in an attempted bag snatch at a shopping centre. She says she's now too scared to leave her home. Report on 7 News at 6pm. #7News pic.twitter.com/2OC9VYXuHA

— 7NEWS Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) June 6, 2018

Police instantly recognised the offender in a security video and he was arrested on Tuesday at home, the publication reported. “It’s a cowardly act on a very innocent victim and a person whose one of the most vulnerable in our community,” Detective Acting Inspector Phill Watts told reporters.

According to 7 News, Mulbacher, who recently lost her husband, has always been social — picking up her grandkids from school every day. But that fierce independence has been stripped by the selfishness of a heartless stranger.

“I’m really, really scared now. I’m very, very frightened,” she said.

Read more: Video catches sickening thief mugging unsuspecting churchgoer

It’s not the first time an elderly person has been targeted in recent times. In the Australian city of Brisbane, a former police officer was knocked from his wheeler in a brutal mugging last month. A hero shopper also stopped an out-of-control addict from attacking other shoppers in an Aldi supermarket earlier this year.

Read more: Another ambo hospitalised after alleged attack by wedding drunk

What do you think? Is enough being done to keep over-60s safe on the streets?