On Sundays I write about someone who deserves our praise and respect. Andrew Papp is such a person. His reason for his heroic actions that day? “It’s just the right thing to do,”
This 15-year-old ROTC student sprinted across a Florida supermarket parking lot earlier this month and tackled a wannabe carjacker who was assaulting a 65-year-old woman.
Billie Richert, the victim of the Dec. 4 attack outside a Publix supermarket in Riverview, FL said, “He told me to give him my keys, and I said no and turned away from him, and he was still all over me,”
A video showed the suspect throwing Richert to the ground — and that’s when Andrew jumped into action.
“I started chasing after him, and he turned around and tried to fight me,” Andrew, a sophomore at Riverview High School, recounted to WTVT, adding that the suspect “was trying to grab my neck and grab my chain, and so I just kind of held him on the ground.”
“I mean that could be someone’s mom, someone’s aunt,” Andrew added to WTVT. “Like, if that was my mom, and someone did that to my mom, and he got away, that’s just, like, that’s terrible.”
Robert Moore, 42, was arrested in connection with the incident, and comparing the photos of the two men, Robert Moore is obviously bigger, obviously older, and likely stronger. Surely Andrew Papp would have been serious underdog, but the teenager just went and did what needed to be done. I’m certain that we would all hope that our sons would act like Andrew Papp, if the situation warranted it.
1/7/24