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VENTURA : Bystanders Come to Aid of Robbery Victim, 75

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Bystanders came to the rescue of a 75-year-old man who was robbed as he walked to church Saturday, capturing the teen-age suspect, police said.

Paul Donathan was walking on North Ventura Avenue around 11:30 a.m. on his way to the Avenue Community Church when the teen-ager ran up behind him and yanked Donathan’s wallet out of his back pocket, said senior pastor Clifford Musgrove, who witnessed the incident.

“Paul’s just a little guy, and he couldn’t really fight back,” Musgrove said. “But everybody knows Paul around here and everybody loves him. Not two seconds later, three men went after that boy and caught him.”

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The men wrestled the youth to the ground and held him until police arrived, Musgrove said. Meanwhile, other witnesses picked up Donathan’s wallet, which the youth had thrown under a car, and returned it to him, he said.

Donathan, a retired Ventura city employee who has a pacemaker, was shaken but unhurt, police said.

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