Mugger hits 101-year-old woman

NEW YORK – A surveillance camera caught a mugger beating a 101-year-old woman, all for the mere $33 she was carrying; shortly later, police say, the same man mugged an 85-year-old woman.

He beat her, too, stealing $32, and though that attack wasn’t caught on video, police say it is the same man.

“There has to be a special rung of hell for him,” said a police official familiar with the incidents, which occurred Sunday.

The older woman suffered a fractured cheekbone that doctors at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens could not repair because of her age.

The 85-year-old suffered facial cuts and bruises.

Police said the older woman displayed quite a bit of moxie when interviewed by detectives. She gets around with a walker – both her hips have been replaced – and suggested her attacker hadn’t seen the best of her.

“If I had better legs, I would have chased him,” the official quoted her saying.

The video shows the mugger grabbing the woman around her neck with his hands, then punching her twice on the left side of her face.

He then fled with the woman’s pocketbook, containing her money and house keys.