Armed with dustrag, woman in Netherlands fights off would-be robber

By Selman Aksunger

AMSTERDAM (AA) – Armed with only her dusting cloth and iron will, a woman in the Netherlands faced down an armed robber who burst into a bakery, intent on clearing out the cash register. Instead, he was the one who was cleared out, and quickly.

In a security camera video that went viral Thursday, Latife Peker, 47, can be seen cleaning up around the bakery’s display case when a robber, lurking at the door, suddenly storms in, brandishing a meat cleaver, ready to rob the establishment.

At first Peker, shocked, backs off strategically, but when the black-clad robber tries his luck with the cash register, Peker, who was tending the bakery for her son, moves in for an all-out assault.

She beats the crook repeatedly with her trusty cleaning cloth, perhaps hoping to daze him with a faceful of dust and cleanser scent.

Moving into close quarters, she and the would-be thief then wrestle it out, with Peker seemingly holding her own against the taller and evidently younger criminal.

When a customer walks in during their struggle, unawares, the thief – facing a possible beatdown from two directions – gives up the ghost and quickly flees, trying to punch the male customer on his way out.

The whole encounter lasts less than 20 seconds.

From there the thief reportedly beat a hasty retreat by bike, painfully aware that he had chosen the wrong bakery to rob, with his plans for easy money foiled by a fierce defender.

Speaking to local media, Peker, a mother of three with Turkish roots, said that she has not realized the thief was carrying a cleaver and never stopped to consider losing her life in the struggle with the thief.

An English proverb says “A man’s home is his castle,” but in one Dutch bakery, a crook found out in short order that a woman’s workplace can also be a well-defended fortress.​​​​​​​