New Mexico ? An 83-year-old great-grandmother thwarted a would-be purse snatcher with a gas nozzle and an iron grip.

Bernie Garcia said a young man approached her at a gas station as she was buying fuel for her van and asked for money. When she told him she had spent all her spare change on gas, he tried to grab her purse.

“But I had it wrapped around my wrist twice,” Garcia said, and he was unable to pull it away.

She fought back, spraying his shirt with some gasoline. Both of them kept hold of the purse, and he pulled her to the ground and dragged her a short distance until another man confronted him.

The second man demanded, “Turn her loose, you something something,” Garcia said.

The would-be mugger jumped into a nearby vehicle and fled. But a witness got the license plate number, and minutes later, police stopped the car. It had been reported stolen from Espanola, said Santa Fe Deputy Police Chief Aric Wheeler.