Two men who tried to rob a Texas couple while dressed in clown masks and wielding a machete were arrested after the pair fought back with fists and a child's scooter.
Suspects Luis Jimenez, 32, and Joe Lugo, 35, were detained by officers from the Texas City Police Department at approximately 2:30 a.m. on February 1, cops confirmed yesterday.
The alleged culprits tried—and failed spectacularly—to threaten the Texas City couple, named by local media as Aretha Cardinal and husband Joseph Nelson. The victims punched their attackers while the woman used a child's scooter as a weapon to fend off the robbers.
"It was really scary, but it was like, it was either us or them, you know, and not us," Cardinal told Fox 26 Houston. "You not gonna steal no money. We ain't got no money."
Texas City Police Department said the clown mask-wearing suspects approached the couple as they were in a car on their driveway. It occurred on the 500 block of 13 Street North.
One suspect put a machete to the throat of the male victim and told him that it was a robbery. But the victims resisted, choosing to fight back. The husband took the machete while his wife "struck the other suspect with a child's scooter which was in the driveway," police said.
"I'm sitting here talking to my wife and the next thing I know, when I look up, I see somebody running towards me with this white clown mask on and a machete," Nelson told Houston's KTRK-TV news outlet this week. "He reached his hand through the window, put it on my throat like this and I'm like 'dude, you serious, you trying to rob me with a machete?'"
Needless to say, the robbery attempt didn't go to plan.
Police said the suspects tried to retreat to a nearby vehicle but the victims followed and delayed their escape by "hitting the suspects' vehicle with the scooter, breaking a window." According to Fox 26 Houston, the scooter belonged to their granddaughter. At one point the husband said he was chasing the suspects with the same machete that was initially used to threaten him.
"Any weapon is good for me if I can get you off me and my husband, that's what I'm going to do," Cardinal told KTRK-TV. "I used the scooter, broke it in half."
Texas City police officers arrived on scene and both suspects were arrested. Inmate records confirmed they were transported to Galveston County Jail with bond set at $100,000 each.
On the jail's inmate roster, Jimenez's surname was listed as Jiminez. The suspects, whose mugshots were also posted online, were charged with aggravated robbery. "I'm safe now knowing that they can't try to hurt nobody else, you know," Cardinal told Fox 26 Houston. "They might go to somebody else that don't react like us."
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