Woman, 66, Who Shot Man Did What She ‘Thought Was Best’

An elderly cafeteria worker who pulled a gun from her coat pocket and shot a man blocking her entrance to a subway train said she just did what she “thought was best.”

Georgia Haugabrooks, 66, said last week she was trying to board a train for West Philadelphia at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday when she told a passenger that he was exiting from the wrong door.

“He just went into a rage, and he hit me in the chest and started knocking on me,” said Haugabrooks, who said she fell to the platform and injured her knee in the scuffle.

Her victim, Eugene Parker, 53, had a slightly different version of the event.

“I was trying to get off the train,” said Parker from his hospital bed. “She wouldn’t move to let me off the train so I pushed her out of the way.”

Parker said the next thing he knew he was lying on the platform, a .32-caliber slug embedded in his left shoulder.

“I heard the noise and then I felt the blow,” he said.

Three city police officers, accompanied by German shepherd dogs, promptly rounded up Haugabrooks and charged her with aggravated assault, possession of an instrument of crime and related offenses.

“I didn’t really mean to hurt him, but I thought about stopping him,” said Haugabrooks, who said she has been carrying a gun for years to and from her job as a night cashier in the Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. cafeteria.

“I was shooting for his leg so he’d get stopped and the police could catch him. I just did what I thought was best to do,” she said, noting she originally obtained her gun in 1976 after being mugged and having her house burglarized. “I never shot anybody else.”