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HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The Houston Police Department is searching for one of two young men that officers say kidnapped and robbed a 73-year-old woman at knifepoint in what she describes as a surprisingly polite encounter.
The woman, Becky Brown, told she believes she saved her life by remaining calm.
Bond has been set at $300,000 for 20-year-old Andre Williams, who’s charged with aggravated kidnapping and robbery charges. The other suspect has not been arrested.
Brown said she was charging her phone in her car outside her west Houston apartment at about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 11, when two young men approached.
She said they both had on masks, and one had a large knife.
Brown was trapped in her car.
“I really don’t think they would have killed me, but I was concerned. Is he going to take that knife out and slash my face or my arm? It was an eight-inch blade,” she explained. “I just felt like if I were to remain calm, they would stay calm, and I’m here, and I’m alive.”
According to Brown, the two men stayed in the car with her for two hours and listened to jazz music. They were trying to transfer money through apps on her phone, but security settings kept getting in the way.
Brown even called her bank.
“The Wells Fargo gentleman asked, ‘Are you alone?’ I am not stupid, I am not going to say that, or I might be killed,” she said. “I said, ‘No, I’m sitting out here in my car, got the windows rolled down.'”
After money transfers failed, the men got a new idea: making Brown drive to Wells Fargo less than a mile away, where she withdrew $2,000 and gave it to them.
Brown walks with a limp and requires hip surgery.
“I’m walking back to the car, and the guy who brandished the knife said, ‘I wish I could have helped you, but I couldn’t go up to the machine with you.’ There’s a dichotomy of what’s going on in our culture. I feel sorry for him in a way. From somewhere in him, he had this kindness, and he meant it,” Brown said.
And with that, Brown said she drove back home, letting out the two men at her gate before calling the police.
“I had shared earlier that I’ll be in a lot better health and be able to do music festivals and street fairs,” she said. “When they got out of my car, the last thing the guy, who had never said anything, said to me was, ‘Go to your music festivals.’ If he were to go to jail, I would visit him. Yeah, I would go visit him.”