Woman tells of gun threat in Horsham car park

The 51-year-old victim, who does not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, says she ‘flew into a rage’ when a man demanded she hand over the keys to her car outside Sainsbury’s supermarket.

She was approached by the man after dark on Saturday November 26, at about 5.30pm, when he wedged himself between the driver’s seat and the door in a bid to stop the victim making a getaway.Another man stood at the back of the car ‘to keep watch’.

“It was really scary,” she said, “he stood there and just looked at me. He said ‘give me the keys’, I was in disbelief.

“Then he said ‘do you want me to shoot you?’ and he put his hand in his pocket.

“You don’t know what he could have had - a gun, a knife.

“I was shocked, my heart was going. I was just frozen, terrified. I didn’t know what to do. My mind was ticking over.”

However, it was not long before she found the resolve to resist the attack.

“The thing to do really was to give him the car, but I thought if he has this he has everything, my car, my purse, my handbag, and suddenly I got this burst of anger and I flew into a rage.”

The terrified shopper explains how she was ‘screaming’ and ‘swearing’ , attracting the attention of two men passing by who ran to see what was happening.

At this point the assailants fled the scene. But the victim was still in a state of shock, and ‘drove off like a mad woman’ down to the barriers where she raised the alarm with staff.