North Carolina Mom Of 8 Goes Viral For Holding Ponytail Of Italian Pickpocket For 1 Hour

A North Carolina woman is being celebrated after a video clip of her physically detaining a suspected pickpocket in Venice went viral on social media.

In the video, Christina Cadieu Greene can be seen holding onto a teenager’s ponytail and refusing to let go for just under an hour until law enforcement arrived.

Greene’s daughter Karis McElroy shared the video and later posted a longer explanation on TikTok. She said that Greene and her husband were walking in a crowded area when they noticed three girls getting close to them. When the couple arrived at their Airbnb, they realized Greene’s purse containing her passport, Apple AirPods, credit cards, and cash was missing. 

The North Carolina resident decided to use Find My Friends to locate the AirPods and the suspected thief.

“She was frantic trying to get this back. Her and my stepdad immediately started tracking her purse through her AirPods on Find My Friends and they were able to track it down back to those three girls because my mom already knew, like, these people must have been it,” McElroy said in the video.

Once she tracked down the girls, she grabbed one by the hair. This inspired a second accomplice to flee the scene while the third girl stood by her friend. Greene did not let go of her hair even as the girl struggled and screamed at her. 

“You stole my purse with my passport in it,” she told the teen. “You are not getting away. I’m not stopping, kid. You are not getting away. I have eight kids, you don’t get to me.”

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McElroy shared a screenshot of a text thread from her mom on the post that said, “Something just came over me and I was so angry, and I went after them and grabbed the youngest of the three by the ponytail and wrapped my hand around the ponytail and would not let go.”

“One girl stayed [and] another one ran off. I ended up holding her by her ponytail with it wrapped around my hand for 50 minutes. She would be screaming at me, cussing at me, and I would scream back and tug harder on her hair. I would pull her down and I would pull her up with her hair.”

Greene said the crowd was cheering “because pickpockets are so bad in this area.”

“The man who runs the Airbnb was wonderful. He came out and called the police, but [it] still took a long time for the police to get there. When the police got there, I released the girl and the [other] one with her went crazy. They were insane,” McElroy said. “They started kicking and fighting with police to get away.”

Greene said one of the girls swung her bag with a metal water bottle in it, which injured her face. “I was bleeding pretty bad. I had a gash on my head and it was running down my face,” she said.

Meanwhile, the third accomplice who had run away with the bag had returned it to a United States liaison office at the airport to avoid being prosecuted. Greene did get her bag back, minus $200 in cash and the AirPods that helped her track it down in the first place.

@karismcelroy

Replying to @kennedy STORY TIME #pickpocketing #foryoupage

♬ original sound – karis

Per The Daily Mail, the two underage suspects were arrested and released on bail.