Girl, 12, thwarts robbery by jumping on thieves' getaway van

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
A 12-year-old girl chased after a group of Arab thieves on Monday who had just stolen her mother's bag and clung to the back door of their getaway vehicle until they threw the bag out the window, police said. The late-morning incident began after the girl's mother had left her car for a minute to drop her younger brother off in daycare in the city's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, and three young Arabs grabbed the woman's bag from the car, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. Unfazed by the robbery in broad daylight, the girl got out of the car and gave chase to one of the thieves, who scrambled into a commercial van and began to flee. Undeterred, the girl hung onto the rear door of their van, stunning the thieves, who then hurled the stolen bag from the van. She then fell off the vehicle and was lightly hurt, but did not require medical treatment, the police said. A passerby who witnessed what had happened summoned police. The girl did not go to school on Monday. The girl's father, Alexander Bialo, said that his daughter had told him she reacted the way she did due to the stress and because she was annoyed with the thieves. "I explained to her what she did was dangerous and that it was better to lose the bag than to get injured," Bialo said. Police were searching for the robbers in the case.