DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — DeKalb County police are searching for robbers who ripped a woman's purse right off her arm as they drove by in a grocery store parking lot.
It happened Monday afternoon in the Kroger shopping center parking lot on Flat Shoals Parkway near Flakes Mill Road in south DeKalb County.
The family reached out to Channel 2's Amy Napier Viteri within an hour of this happening. The woman told Viteri they, like so many, are paycheck to paycheck. She came here to get cash for her rent payment.
Nydra Campbell said it was lunch time and she walked to her car when two men pulled up behind her and grabbed her purse and cash right from her hands.
"It's broad daylight. I just can't imagine something like that would happen during the day in a busy parking lot full of people," Campbell told Viteri.
Campbell now wonders if someone was watching her Monday afternoon as she took out cash from the Best Bank ATM inside the grocery store.
"I wonder if they're sitting around preying on people like that," Campbell said.
During lunch time Campbell went to the store and took out $600 in two transactions for a money order to pay her family's rent.
She was walking in the parking lot when she says a car drove up behind her and even let her cross over the aisle toward her car.
"When it came past it just snatched it off my arm," Campbell said.
She says she chased after the car when one of the men grabbed her purse. Seconds later they tossed the empty bag out the window.
"We have to figure out a way to come up with our rent money now. It's just horrible," Campbell said.
The working mother says the family counts on each paycheck. Her husband Andre works overnight so she often tries to run errands while he sleeps.
"They've just taken from my whole family right now. So it's just heartbreaking," Campbell said.
"It's very hurting to know you're not safe anywhere," said husband Andre Campbell.
Nydra says it's not fair women are often vulnerable just getting things done.
"For all the single moms or single people out there, there's nobody to walk to the ATM with them," Nydra Campbell said.
She has a message for the men who responsible: "They took something from me. I work so hard for it. And they should just be ashamed."
DeKalb police are now investigating.
Campbell told Viteri the two men who robbed her were in a black sedan but at this point she has little hope of getting her money returned.
Woman says men stole purse right off her arm after using ATM
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