A 16-year-old boy is seen in a surveillance video shoving a 68-year-old woman down the steps of a New York church. (Screenshot from NBC News/YouTube; victim’s photo from GoFundMe)
A 16-year-old boy shoved a 68-year-old grandmother about to attend a Sunday morning service down the steps of a New York church before grabbing her purse and stealing her car as she lay motionless on the sidewalk, authorities said.
The unidentified juvenile was arrested outside his residence on Thursday. He faces charges of first-degree assault, first-degree robbery and grand larceny, prosecutors said in a news release. He also faces charges in an unrelated stickup on April 4 in which he’s accused of simulating a gun with his hand in his pocket and stealing a woman’s Toyota Corolla, officials said.
“The viciousness with which the defendant is accused of having committed the robbery at the church struck the city at its core,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “As alleged, he chose to rob an elderly woman by first pushing her down the stairs and then proceeded to take her purse and leave her to suffer while he took off in her car. He will now have to answer for the serious charges levied against him by my office.”
Irene Tahliambouris was about to enter the Saint Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Briarwood on Sunday when she was pushed, authorities said.
In the incident caught on surveillance video, the boy is seen hitting her as she reaches the top step. She falls down the stairs and lands headfirst on the sidewalk. He took her purse and checked her pockets while she was on the ground, and then he got into her Nissan Altima and drove off, authorities said.
Tahliambouris was hospitalized in critical but stable condition with a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain, officials said. She could not stand or move on her own, prosecutors said.
Her family told the New York Daily News that she was slowly improving.
“She’s still recovering. Yesterday, she started recognizing us,” family member Daniel Coffaro Hill, 19, told the newspaper. “She was brushing her hair today, really slow, but she’s in her right mind. She knows who we are now.”
Father Konstantinos Kalogridis, the church’s head priest, told the New York Post in a phone interview before the arrest that he was shocked.
“She’s a parishioner of our church who was coming to church to attend the service in the morning,” he said, the Post reported. “I was in the office during the service, but when I saw the footage of what happened, it was horrible. I can’t believe — right on the top of the steps of the church — to do this to an elderly woman.”
In an online fundraiser, the victim’s son said she’s a beloved grandmother who “would always do anything she could to help anyone at all times.”
“Always happy and in good spirits,” he wrote.
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