Grandmother, 94, Dragged, Killed in Purse-Snatching

She had been burglarized four times. Once, a bullet came flying through her dining room window. But Gladys Grantz, 94, had refused to move from the Lynwood house where she had lived for 45 years.

For years, her grandchildren had implored her to move. But the great-great-grandmother of 10 who relatives and friends said “was not afraid of anything or anyone” wouldn’t budge.

After the riots this spring, family members said she finally agreed to move in with her granddaughter in San Marino. She had planned to move in two weeks.

But Grantz was killed on Saturday when two men tried to snatch her purse.

The men drove alongside Grantz as she walked away from her bank, authorities said. The man in the passenger seat reached out of the car and grabbed her purse. She clung to the purse strap and was dragged along the street for about 150 feet until the strap broke and she hit her head on the pavement, still clutching her purse, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.

Mary Whitaker, one of Grantz’s four grandchildren, said Monday that Grantz had gone to the bank to get two-dollar bills that she liked to give as birthday presents.

“It was my birthday and also her great-great-grandson’s,” said Whitaker, standing outside Grantz’s Virginia Street house. “It was a tradition for her to give a two-dollar bill and a birthday card every year.

“Grandma didn’t look at all like she had any money. Why they would pick on a harmless, defenseless woman, I just don’t know.”

Sheriff’s Homicide Detective Sgt. James Sears said Grantz had just walked out of a Security Pacific Bank branch on Imperial Highway about 10 a.m. when her assailants drove up. He described their car as an older, mid- to full-sized, two-door American model with a gray-primer paint over a white or beige body.

Sears described the suspects as African-American men, between 20 and 25, one with a closely shaved head.

After the assault, Grantz was taken to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center where she died of massive head injuries shortly after 1 p.m., Sears said.

“I was a robbery detective for 15 years,” he said. “This is very unusual.”

Andrea Hooper, who has lived across the street from Grantz since 1968, said the fiercely independent woman regularly went to downtown Lynwood on Saturdays.

“There was no way anybody could stop her from getting on the trolley on Saturday morning and going to the market,” Hooper said. “She wasn’t frightened of anything or anybody.”

Whitaker, who lived in Lynwood until she moved to Orange County in 1977, said that she and her sister, Jacqueline Cortina, had finally persuaded their grandmother to move in with Cortina in her San Marino home.

“We were always the ones concerned for her safety,” she said. “She was never concerned. But after the L. A. riots, grandma became more receptive to the idea. She told her neighbors that she was moving in a couple of weeks.”

Anyone with information about the attack on Grantz should call the Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau, (213) 974-4341, investigators said.

Services for Grantz will be Friday at Rose Hills Memorial Park near Whittier, relatives said.

Just minutes before Grantz was attacked on Saturday, two men tried to rob a 40-year-old Lynwood woman in a supermarket parking lot within a block of where Grantz was attacked, deputies said. Investigators say they believe those men may have been the same men who attacked Grantz.

The victim’s name was not released.