Mother of Tacoma Girl Scout speaks out about attempted robbery
Mar 15, 2018, 5:51 PM | Updated: Oct 11, 2024, 9:43 am
Jenny Dubois (right) and her daughter, Haliyah (purple hat) with fellow troop members (Photo courtesy of Jenny Dubois)
(Photo courtesy of Jenny Dubois)
A mother and her 11-year-old daughter from Girl Scout troop 43898 were in front of a Tacoma Fred Meyer selling cookies when two men starting hanging around the booth. At first, Jenny Dubois thought nothing of it.
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Then they started asking her questions.
“The young man that approached me made me feel kind of uneasy, I felt a weird vibe coming from him,” Dubois said. “He was looking at her [daughter’s] fanny pack that she was wearing and asked if that was her money bag and that’s when I knew something was up. Right then and there he stepped right up to me and pulled up his shirt to show his waistband and said, ‘Give me your money. You and your daughter won’t be hurt. No one will be hurt.'”
She said he revealed a gun when he lifted his shirt.
“I kind of went into panic mode. Not necessarily panic, but scared and angry at the same time because he just threatened my child. So I stood up and said, ‘No! You can’t have any money because I don’t have any money to give you!’ I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to rob a little girl? A Girl Scout?’ He kept demanding I give him money, my purse. I told him, ‘No! Go away. Why are you doing this? You need to walk away.’ I prayed that someone would hear me interact with this young man. Someone did and he looked up at me and he must have seen help coming so he and his buddy took off.”
Police are still looking for the two men who tried to rob them. There’s a $1,000 reward out for their arrest. Dubois said they only had $20 on them when the men threatened to rob them.
Obviously, Dubois, her daughter, and the entire troop were rattled. But they’re determined not to let the incident intimidate them.
“[My daughter] was scared but she wants to show that she is brave and she’s not going to let this stop her from what she loves to do and that’s Girl Scouts. A Girl Scout is strong and brave; she says that we need to stand up for ourselves.”
On Thursday, they went back to the same Fred Meyer to sell cookies in the same exact spot.
“The girls got together and they said, you know, we can’t let people get us down. They came up with a slogan and it’s called: ‘You can’t keep a Girl Scout down.’ You can knock us down but we’re going to get back up and continue to do what we love and not be afraid.”
