MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis Police are still searching for a man who robbed a woman at gunpoint outside her South Memphis apartment Tuesday morning.
After dropping her husband off at work, Charlotte McMullen said she was headed back inside her apartment on the 800 block of Provine Avenue around 7:30 a.m.
McMullen said she had just unlocked her door when she realized she had company, a masked man armed with a gun.
“He came from the side and he said, ‘Give me that phone,’ ‘cause I was on my telephone he said ‘Give me that phone.”
McMullen surrendered the phone, but the thief’s demands continued. He asked for her money and her purse.
“Lord, all I want is my life. He can have this stuff,” she remembers thinking.
But the thief’s next command had McMullen fearing the worst. He ordered her into her apartment where her 20-year-old daughter was in another room completely oblivious to what was happening.
“I was like I gave him what he asked me for. I mean, like, what is he gonna do now? The only thing I could think of he gonna kill me now.”
McMullen and her daughter were never harmed. The thief was more interested in the contents of her purse.
“He followed me all the way to my bedroom, he went back there and shook my bag out … was just shaking my bag out,” she said.
After grabbing $30 in cash and McMullen’s car keys, the thief left in her car.
A paramedic said he spotted a man in the car almost four hours later in Frayser after hearing what sounded like a crash. But when he asked the man if he needed help, the man reportedly began gathering what he could from the car and took off running.
“It’s a crazy mess out here, you know what I’m saying,” said McMullen’s husband C. W. Williams.
Williams said he’s grateful for his wife’s life, but he’s hoping the man who robbed her gets a taste of justice.
“You know what I’m saying, I want to do something to him or whatever, whatever,” he said.
“I’ve been here eight years and it never happened to me before. Never, ever. This the first time. After 51 years, I never been robbed until today,” McMullen said.
The suspect is described as being in his 20’s, standing around 5-feet 5-inches and having a medium build. He was wearing a gray hoodie and a black mask over his face.