Stun-Gun-Wielding Robbers Get $1

Alicia K. DeRieux was getting out of her car at her gated apartment complex Tuesday night when two men suddenly appeared.

One, armed with a stun gun, dropped to a crouch and shot her in the right arm.

“It felt like it does when you drag your feet on a carpet and then touch metal, but for anextended period of time,” said DeRieux, 23, a planning consultant. “It was kind of frightening.”

The two men grabbed her purse off her shoulder and fled from the complex, in the 6700 block of Warner Avenue.

They got away with $1 plus her checks and department store credit cards.

“This is a rare one,” Lt. John Foster said of the robbery.

The weapons, which are legal, send out electronic charges from two metal prongs, shocking the victims and in some cases rendering the person unconscious.

“The shock lasted a long time. It seemed like 30 seconds,” DeRieux recalled Wednesday.

As she was being shocked, one of the robbers who was standing behind her took her purse off her shoulder and looked through it, DeRieux said. “He asked me where the money was, and I said I didn’t have any.”

“I hardly ever carry any cash around--I’m usually broke,” DeRieux said.

She suffered a small bruise, but did not require hospitalization, the lieutenant said. DeRieux was unable to give police a detailed description of her assailants.

DeRieux said she had moved into the complex two months ago but plans to “move out very quickly” because of the robbery.

“It was pretty scary,” she said.