ATLANTA — Atlanta police need your help identifying the people seen using a stolen credit card in surveillance pictures.
They show a man and woman inside a Chevron gas station on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway the night of May 13.
Police say the pair is using a credit card stolen from a jogger who was attacked as she was walking home just an hour and a half earlier in the Virginia Highland neighborhood.
"I wasn't sure if he was choking her. It sounded like he pinned her arms behind her head and pushed her down," said witness Mike Palese.
Palese witnessed the attack. He spoke with Channel 2's Amy Napier Viteri Monday night and said he was walking his dog on Virginia Avenue in northeast Atlanta.
At first he says he thought two people were wrestling.
"It was not until I heard, 'Help, I'm being attacked!' that I started yelling at the top of my lungs, 'Hey! Stop!'" Palese said.
Police say the woman was walking when a man ran up behind her and choked her. He tried to get her phone and ended up throwing her on the ground to get the iPhone and a credit card.
"She started chasing him. She was saying, 'Hey, that's my phone,' so I started running behind with my dog," Palese said.
Palese says several people then ran after the guy who got in a black Chevy Impala a couple blocks away.
"This is a very prominent location for that, to just out of nowhere a flash attack like that," Palese said.
People told us they were surprised not just that this happened so close to shops and restaurants, but also by the aggressiveness of the attack
"If something like that were to happen, I feel like people would just give them whatever they had to stay safe. But she didn't even have the opportunity to protect herself," Palese said.
Anyone with information on the identity of the two people using the credit cards is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477.
WSBTV
