Story Archive

Maternal Instincts

Josefa Lopez, 80, asked her daughter, Teresa Medina, to give her a ride to the taping of a TV show. But before they could leave Lopez’s Hialeah, Fla., driveway, a man grabbed Medina by the arm and pulled her out of the driver’s seat. Then, Lopez says, the man started shouting “Give me” as he pulled her to the ground by her hair and started kicking her and hitting her with a gun. That was when Lopez charged him. “I thought she was dead,” Lopez said. “I yelled at him, ‘I am going to kill you, son of a bitch!’ I wasn’t myself.” She hit him with her cane, and the man fled, taking Medina’s purse with him. Medina had scrapes and bruises on her arms and back, and a large bruise under her eye, but was otherwise unharmed. Although she acknowledges she could have been killed, the 4-foot-9-inch Lopez says she would do it again. “When you see your daughter in trouble,” she said, “you have to do something.” Her daughter, by the way, is 61. (MS/South Florida Sun-Sentinel) ...NEVER get between a mother and her child — no matter the age or species.