Arriving home after seeing the musical "Wicked", former U.S. senator Carol Moseley Braun suffered a broken wrist when a wicked mugger tried to steal her purse by cutting the straps.
PLEASE TELL US THIS FOOL WASN'T BLACK!!!
According to authorities, Braun, 59, was standing at her front door late Friday when an assailant came out of the bushes. When Braun resisted, the man pulled a knife.
"I turned to look and saw a woman on the ground and a man on top of her assaulting her," Zachary Trayes-Gibson said. After the attacker ran off without the purse, Trayes-Gibson was surprised to learn who he was helping.
Braun said she was grateful to Zachary and Rachel McFadden for assisting her, "They very well could have saved my life."
Braun, a Democrat from Illinois, became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, serving one term. She lost her re-election bid in 1998. After her defeat, President Clinton appointed her ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.
She made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2004, following in the late Congressman Shirley Chisholm's footsteps (click here).
Braun's recent experience seems eerily similar to what a giant in the African American community experienced some thirteen years ago:
AUGUST 31, 1994 - Her face bruised and her lip swollen, the mother of the civil rights movement seemed more sad than angry as she quietly described being robbed and beaten in her bedroom.
"I regret very much that some of our people are in such a mental state that they would hurt and rob an older person," Rosa L. Parks said as she sat in her modest, rented home, five blocks from the boulevard named in her honor.
Parks, whose defiance of segregation in 1955 led to the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama was listed in good condition. The 81-year old pioneer was released without being admitted to the hospital.
Mrs. Parks would go on to live another decade, before graduating in 2005 at the ripe age of 92. (AP)
P.S. - WE FOUND OUT THE ATTACKER'S RACE - ONE GUESS?
Speaking of a strong woman.... scroll on