Jacqueline Boss, 44, and Heidi Lawrence, 32, were dining Tuesday at a Galveston restaurant when Lawrence went to the restroom, leaving her purse on the table.
Boss had been watching a man about 20 feet away. He hadn't ordered a drink and appeared to be faking a conversation on a cell phone, said Boss' mother, Jeannette Westerman, according to an online story Thursday in the Houston Chronicle.
The man snatched the purse and Boss chased him, even as he jumped over a 5-foot fence behind the restaurant.
"I grabbed his T-shirt and yelled at some guys at the bar. We spun around. I was knocked to the ground and it took five guys to jump him and hold him down," said Boss in an online story Thursday in The Galveston County Daily News.
After police arrived, a woman whose purse had been snatched from another restaurant about an hour earlier identified the same man as the culprit. Joshua Griffin, 21, of Galveston, was charged with two counts of theft and was released from the Galveston County Jail on Wednesday after posting bail on a $5,000 bond.
Boss had an operation for her right leg, which broke just below the knee. She was recovering Thursday at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center in Webster.
Westerman, speaking from her daughter's hospital room, said, "She's very tough. She's a very strong woman."
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