A ‘pregnant’ pickpocket was grabbed by the hair and prevented from running away by an irate husband as she tried to steal his wife’s backpack in Italy.
The woman, who claimed to be pregnant after being caught, was held by the hair and arms and stopped from ‘stealing’ the tourist’s bag at Piazza di San Lorenzo, a popular square in Florence.
Footage of the fracas shows two men, including the husband of the victim, keeping hold of the ‘thief’ as she tries to wriggle free.
One man clutched onto her hair, before she drops the backpack, while another gripped her left arm.
The woman appeared to shout ‘I’m pregnant’ in Spanish.
Another pickpocket then appeared demanding the woman should be released, while a tourist can be heard repeatedly shouting for the police as they recover the backpack.
Two thieves were reportedly later arrested.
The video, posted on Instagram by firenze_cronaca_pickpocket, is captioned ‘this time it happened that two pickpockets, together, tried to steal a tourist’s backpack.
‘The husband, exasperated, intervened and reacted with force to defend his wife. In the end, luckily, the police also arrived who stopped and arrested them.’
Piazza di San Lorenzo is a popular spot for tourists and is the site of the Basilica of San Lorenzo, the city’s oldest cathedral.
The square also has a central market and souvenir stalls.
The thieves were hampered in the same week a US tourist grabbed the ponytail of a young pickpocket for 50 minutes as she tracked down the thief.
Footage of the incident, which took place earlier this month in the Santa Maria del Giglio area of Venice, shows a furious Christina Cadieu Greene gripping a 14-year-old’s hair after spotting the teen sneaking her purse, which contained her money and passport, into her bag.
Viewers were left stunned and impressed at Greene’s reaction and her daughter has since taken to TikTok to explain how her mother retrieved her belongings.
According to Karis McElroy, her mother and stepfather had been passing through Venice before setting off on a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea.
The daughter explained that three crowds of people had surrounded her mother while she was attempting to make her way to the Airbnb.
But once she had arrived, she noticed her bag had been left unzipped and her water bottle and purse – which contained her passport, credit cards, cash and a pair of AirPod Bluetooth headphones – were missing.
She then explained her mother’s quick thinking which led her to be able to track down the young thief, even among the throngs of people.
‘She was frantic trying to get this back. Her and my stepdad immediately started tracking her purse through her AirPods on Find My Friends and they were able to track it down back to those three girls because my mom already knew, like, these people must have been it,’ she said.
Once Greene had located the three teenage girls, she grabbed one of them by the ponytail. The second girl stayed at the scene while the third girl ran off with McElroy’s mom’s purse, the daughter said.
But Greene remained determined to retrieve her belongings and in footage of the incident, the young girl can be seen struggling and screaming at the angry tourist, but she holds on tight telling her: ‘You stole my purse with my passport in it.
‘You are not getting away. I’m not stopping, kid. You are not getting away. I have eight kids, you don’t get to me.’
McElroy said her stepfather was tasked with helping retrieve her mother’s stolen goods while she waited for cops to arrive.
In a message from Greene shared in a screenshot on McElroy’s post, the mother admitted: ‘Something just came over me and I was so angry, and I went after them and grabbed the youngest of the three by the ponytail and wrapped my hand around the ponytail and would not let go.
The two young suspects, who were both minors, were charged with theft before being released on bail.
The duo were reportedly spotted back on the streets among swathes of tourists just two days later, on Saturday, according to local reports.
