Three young thieves targeted a 77 year old woman at an ATM expecting an easy mark only to run for their lives when she

Winifred Peel had just typed in her PIN at a cash machine in Bromborough, on the Wirral, when she noticed someone standing very close on her right.

She was 77. The man pushed against her, hard enough to make her rock to one side. She recognised him, because she had seen him leaving a Barclays bank earlier. A second man then leaned over her and pressed the button to withdraw £200. A third, Piper Dumitru, was reportedly keeping watch.

That was the moment she understood what was happening.

She took hold of the second man by the collar and banged his head against the cash machine three times. She did it, the prosecutor later said, to try and stop him. The three men ran.

They had driven to the village looking for easy targets, the court heard. They had watched her enter her PIN and decided she was one.

It did not take police long to find them. The injuries on one man's head told their own story, and officers worked out it was Felix Stoica, 19, whom she had grabbed. He and his two friends, Florin Geblescu and Dumitru, both 18, pleaded guilty to robbery. At Liverpool Crown Court, Judge Norman Wright told them they had picked a vulnerable victim, and that despite her age she had resisted. Stoica was sentenced to two years in a young offenders' institution, Geblescu to 18 months and Dumitru to eight months.

Winning the struggle did not mean she walked away untouched. Winifred said the attack had changed her life. Something that ordinary, a walk to a cash machine, had been taken from her in a few seconds.

In her statement, she said the thing that mattered most to her now: "I only hope my confidence returns."

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The Last Judicial Hanging in The United States

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Holocaust victim

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