By Michal Ortner
A 91-year-old woman, Willie Mae Dowdy, was held at gunpoint after waking up in her Hornlake, MS home on January 3 around 4 a.m. She recalls waking up to the sounds of falling glass because an armed robber had broken a window to get inside.
The robber held a gun to her head and mumbled something about “blowing her brains out.”
Dowdy, a devout Christian, did not let her fear paralyze her. Rather, she prayed for him and gave him some words of wisdom. She recounted the exact words that she spoke to the man who had entered her home to rob her and possibly do much worse.
“I said, ‘You do know where you’d go. I’m going to a better place. I’m going to heaven. You’re going to hell,'” she recounted. “I said, ‘You’ve got to think about that. Would you want that to happen?’
She also reminded him of the type of consequences he could face if he were caught. “I told him, ‘You may spend the rest of your life in prison, or you may be put to death if you kill me,’” she said. “He didn’t say a word. He turned around and he stared at the wall and then all at once, he turned on his heels, walked back out in that hallway.”
The man reportedly stole her purse, which contained around $600. She had withdrawn the cash in order to pay for bills and medication. Despite being robbed, she was grateful that God granted her safety and chose to spare her life. “I just knew I was fixing to die, but I said, ‘Oh God, please don’t. Take care of me.’ And I guess He heard me,” she said.
The police began investigation but had very little information and no leads to the man’s location. He was dressed in black from head to toe. The woman had no streetlights outside of her home on Sherry Drive.
Following the distressing ordeal, a code enforcement officer discovered the woman’s purse lying on a road outside of city limits. The officer found the $600 in the bottom of the purse and turned it into the police.
Dowdy stated, “That was the last thing I thought would happen. I didn’t think I’d get a dime of it back. It was in the bank envelope,” Dowdy explained how the robber may have not noticed the money inside her purse. “It hadn’t even been open at all, but it was soaking wet.” Though the purse and money was recovered, there are still no clues as to the identity of the thief.
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