Car Ran Over Victim in Purse Theft, Witness Says : Hearings: Freda Crawford, 83, died more than a year after being injured in the robbery, and two men are charged with her murder.

An elderly Granada Hills woman was dragged by a car for 60 feet and run over as she tried to keep a robber from taking her purse, a witness testified Tuesday in a preliminary hearing for two men charged with the woman’s murder.

Michael P. Kellet, 21, and Richard E. Phillips, 20, both of Northridge could be sentenced to 26 years to life in prison if convicted in the murder of Freda Crawford, 83, who died last April in a convalescent home. Deputy Dist. Atty. David R. Lopez, who is prosecuting the case, said Crawford’s death resulted from injuries suffered in the robbery.

Crawford was preparing to load groceries into her car outside the Hughes supermarket at Devonshire Street and Balboa Boulevard when a white Chevrolet Camaro drove up beside her and the driver grabbed her purse, Cecilia Rivera testified Tuesday in San Fernando Municipal Court.

“The lady was dragging alongside the car. She was knocked down at the completion of a sharp swerve,” Rivera said. “I saw the left rear wheel go over her head. The purse went into the car.”

Rivera said the car turned out of the parking lot and sped off on Devonshire.

Kellet and Phillips were arrested the next day after a boy who had heard news accounts of the robbery saw a car that matched the description of the suspects’ vehicle, Lopez said. The boy’s father notified police, who stopped the car in an undeveloped part of Northridge where the men had gone to ditch it, Lopez said.

Kellet was sentenced in late 1988 to four years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of robbery, involving Crawford and an earlier purse-snatching, Lopez said. Phillips has appealed his robbery convictions in the same case, for which he is serving a seven-year sentence, Lopez said.

The two were charged with murder after Crawford died more than a year after the robbery. She was in a coma for three months after the attack and was kept on a life-support device until her death, Lopez said.