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Ballsy SoHo Woman To Armed Robber: You "Don't Have The Balls" To Shoot Me
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 11, 2013
Modified Jul 11, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 11, 2013
Modified Jul 11, 2013
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A SoHo resident stood up to an armed mugger last week, telling him to his face that he didn't have the balls to shoot her. Anna Graham, 54, was smoking a cigarette in her pajamas in front of her home on Grand Street around 1 a.m. on July 3rd when two robbers approached her and demanded her wallet. “He asked me for my wallet and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Graham told the Daily News. “I was in my pajamas, for Christ’s sake!"
“That’s when the gun went against my forehead,” Graham, who was in front of a friend's car at the time, continued. “He said, ‘I’ll shoot you, b---h!’ I said, ‘No, you won’t.’ ” At that point, the accomplice told him to shoot her: “He lowered it to my chest. The other one was right next to him saying, ‘Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!’ ” Graham said she kept eye contact with the one suspect though: “I said, ‘It’s not easy to shoot someone. You have to have balls to do that. And you have none.’ ”
“For a second there, I saw fear—for just a split second," she added. "I went against all the rules, everything he knew about life.” At that point, a female friend of Graham's came out of the apartment and tried to pounce on the robbers; another friend came soon after, and called 911.
The muggers fled at that point, but not before grabbing an iPad mini, a Samsung Galaxy cell phone and about $600 in cash from the car. Police add that they still remain at large. A neighbor told the Post that this was par for the course from Graham: “She doesn’t take s--t from anyone,” said Angus Kneale.
This kind of confrontational approach to muggers doesn't always end so happily. The "you don't have the balls to shoot me" remark is chillingly similar to the last words of 28-year-old actress-playwright Nicole duFresne, who was shot dead in front of her friends on Clinton Street in 2005. duFresne reportedly told a group of teens trying to mug her and her friends, "What are you going to do, shoot us?" 21-year-old Rudy Fleming did just that.
In 2006, Fleming was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and the murder in part inspired Richard Price's excellent novel Lush Life.
Tagged
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ballsy
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manhattan
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robber
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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