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Grandmother Defeats Carjacker By Spraying Him With Perfume

‘I was just thinking, this guy’s gonna kill me’

There’s nothing more sickening than when criminals prey on the most vulnerable among us. Although elderly people are less likely to be the targets of violent criminals, their physical, mental, and financial suffering is often much worse than that experienced by younger victims. But when a thief in Ohio recently tried to steal the car of 61-year-old grandmother, Joyce Kenney, he had no idea what was coming. She was able to subdue the man by burning his eyes with her perfume.


Kenney was ambushed by a masked thief as she walked out of her home. The carjacker grabbed her and demanded that she get into her black four-door Toyota sedan and start driving. So Kenney hit the gas, taking her little sedan up to 80 miles per hour in hopes she would be pulled over by a police officer. But when no police came to her aid, she began to fear the worst. “I was just thinking, this guy’s gonna kill me,” she told Inside Edition.

So that’s when Kenney decided to take things into her own hands. She grabbed a nine-inch-tall pink bottle of perfume she had stashed in her driver-side door and sprayed the carjacker in the eyes. “Of course, he grabbed his eyes because it burns,” she said. Then she kicked him out of the car and drove to a local gas station and called the police. Kenney’s grace under pressure is an empowering lesson not just for older people, but anyone in an unsafe position. “Don’t think that you can’t do something when you’re scared because you can,” she said. “I found that out.”

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