crime

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A 6-foot, 2-inch tall, 250-pound robber was not content to rob just a mother's purse -- he grabbed her toddler's purse too. Karley Felschow won't be 2 until Dec. 29, but she's been robbed at gunpoint by a robber who wanted the tiny pink "Disney Princess" purse the little girl was clutching. Lorenzo Brewer, 23, was arrested after a security guard chased him -- just after he allegedly pressed a hand-gun in the chest of 25-year-old Patricia Felschow and took her purse -- and her daughter's purse -- in front of her apartment house. "I was really surprised when he took Karley's purse, too. Who takes a little pink purse from a 1-year-old girl?" the mother asked. Although the two purses were recovered, the $315 Christmas money that Patricia Felschow had earned working overtime was missing.

NORTON SHORES, Mich. - A Michigan man was arrested for shoe theft after he allegedly trespassed at a school and athletic shoes were found in his car that were way too big for him. Police in Norton Shores believe that Roger Weil wanted the shoes for "sexual gratification," the Muskegon Chronicle reported. Jose Gutierrez, a security guard at Mona Shores High School, found Weil in a hallway this week. Gutierrez thought he looked like a man caught by a security camera in November on the day a pair of shoes and $20 disappeared from the school. Gutierrez called police and with the responding officer escorted Weil to his car, where they found a pair of size 14 shoes. Weil has a long history of arrests and convictions for larceny, including previous thefts of shoes from schools.

LONDON - An asylum-seeking British postal worker has been convicted of masterminding a $35 million checkbook theft and fraud operation in London. Prosecutors said Dido Mayue-Belezika, who was born in the Democratic Republic of  Congo, intercepted and stole every checkbook he came across at a sorting office in a scam involving more than 220 accomplices around the country over a three-year period, The Times of London reported. Officially, he earned $430 a week and concealed his lifestyle of luxury cars, designer clothes and lavish foreign holidays by wearing modest clothes at work and driving a secondhand Fiat. But, his bank account always had a $70,000 balance and he carried a wallet stuffed with large bills. Police staged a series of raids across the country in April and took 36 people into custody.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - An Alaska grandmother has turned detective as she hunts two men who stole her purse. Fifty-five-year-old Rosie Szymanski was unloading her shopping bags in the parking lot of an Anchorage Costco Monday afternoon when someone shoved her, stole her purse and ran to a waiting car. The Anchorage Daily News reports Szymanski took off after him and identified the thief and the getaway driver as white males in their early 20s. She said they drove a maroon Jeep. "They are lucky I didn't have my .45 automatic," she said. "I would have blasted them." So far Szymanski has tracked the suspects to a number of shops, restaurants and gas stations where the pair used her credit cards before she could cancel them.