“I yelled several times loudly that he stole my purse, and Mr. Marino threw his table down in front of him,” Schmidt said. “The thief got past the table, but Mr. Marino followed him and tackled him at the outside door.”
Marino, a former defensive lineman for Wittenberg University in Springfield, told WHIO-TV on Tuesday, “Maybe it was football instincts, I don’t really know.”
“I do remember he said something like, ‘What’s your deal, man?’ ” Marino said of the purse-snatcher, who fled. “He must have thought I was a little bit crazy.”
Schmidt, who called Marino a “hero,” said a woman from Versailles saw the incident and got the man’s license plate number. She said Kroger security also captured the incident on tape.
“Nick Marino came right back into the store, picked up his table, and kept on trying to sell the weekend DDN,” Schmidt said.
“I was only a few feet away at the coffee shop and heard everyone as they told him ‘no.’ Before I left, I made sure that he made one sale. I don’t have the power to thank him in any other way. I sure am grateful that he was there.”
Staff writer David Jablonski contributed to this report.
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