Pastor attacked, robbed by half naked gunman

A female pastor who was recently attacked by a half naked man thinks that something serious needs to be done about the predator or predators who seem to be operating in some areas of East and West St George.

“The description of this man that attacked me fits the description of another rapist. He’s moving around a lot,” said Reverend Phyllis Ralph-Browne who was walking along the Villa-Fountain road on Saturday at around 9:50 a.m., when she was robbed at gunpoint by a man wearing only briefs and a bandanna over his mouth and nose.

According to Ralph-Browne, she was walking towards the Villa main road, where she was hoping to catch a minivan to Kingstown to purchase building materials for her church, when she felt someone jump on her and grab her around her neck from behind.{{more}}

She said that the dark-skinned man with matted hair pushed a gun into her jaw and told her not to scream, while try- ing to pull her into some nearby bushes.

“I felt like I was in another time zone. He did not ask for money,” said the woman who believes that the man’s sole intention was to rape her, because if he wanted to just rob her he would have pulled away her bag from the start.

She said that she began struggling with her attacker and both of them fell to the ground, after which the man got up and ran off with her bag which contained about EC$1,000 of church money, EC$300 of her own money, her cel- lular phone and other items.

She said that the man was extremely slim and ran “weird,” as his feet hardly left the ground, although he was moving very quickly.

Ralph-Browne, the pas- tor of St Mary’s Baptist Church and a retired nurse, said that she never thought about being involved in a situation like that, as in her life she has helped so many persons.

“I was a nurse caring for so many persons and I never thought about anything like this, but I’ not the type of person to give in,” she explained, and stressed that she thinks that God put her in that position to save a little girl who passed right after the incident took place.

“There I was saying ‘M God’, because I saw a lit- tle girl about 13 years old, walking merrily along after the incident and I think I prevented her from getting raped,” stressed Ralph-Browne.

She said that a motorist assisted her in calling the police and while they waited for the police to show up, the motorist got fed up and left, so she went home and got her daughter and was on her way back to the area where she was attacked when she saw the police approaching, over an hour later.

She said that she and the policemen went up into the bushes in the area where her attacker fled and they found her empty bag.

She is of the view that the area where she was attacked needs to be cleared, as it is very bushy. (LC)