Winifred Peel is 77 years old, and that day she left a bank in Bromborough, Wirral, with £200 she had just withdrawn.
Three young men from Manchester —Felix Stoica, Piper Dumitru and Florin Geblescu—had been watching her from inside the bank. According to prosecutor William Beardmore, they had traveled to that town specifically to look for “easy targets”. They shoved her while she was entering her PIN, and when one of them leaned over to steal the money from the ATM, Winifred realized what was happening.
She did not freeze. She grabbed the attacker by the neck and slammed his head against the ATM three times. All three fled, but the police identified them thanks to her recognizing one of them as the man she had seen leaving Barclays hours earlier.
Judge Norman Wright was unequivocal when sentencing them: they had attacked a vulnerable victim who, despite her age, resisted until the very end. Stoica received two years in prison, Geblescu 18 months and Dumitru eight. Winifred says she will never again feel the same sense of security as before.