TITUSVILLE, Fla. — A man tried to save the life of a man who was having a heart attack, but now he's wanted by police. It turns out he was not much of a Good Samaritan; detectives say he stole a purse from the dying man's wife.
The victim's husband didn't survive, so she lost her husband as she was being robbed.
Police first thought the suspect was simply trying to save a dying man, but it was only after the man died at the hospital that the woman noticed her purse was missing.
Police went back to talk to the Circle K store clerk who told police he saw the so-called Good Samaritan taking the purse out of the dying man's car.
A surveillance camera captured one picture of the would-be hero inside the convenience store the night he tried to come to the rescue of a heart attack victim.
Police say a couple from Union Park pulled into a Titusville Circle K after the 59-year-old man fell unconscious. His wife sought help and the clerk called 911.
"Is he breathing?" a 911 dispatcher asks the caller.
"No, he's not," the caller responds. "He's not breathing."
Police said, last Friday the man in the surveillance picture jumped into action, performing CPR on the man until paramedics arrived. As the dying man was taken to the hospital, police say the clerk saw the suspect go into the couple's car and grab the wife's purse off the driver's seat.
Authorities say, at first, it appeared he was just retrieving it for the woman while she was tending to her husband.
"It makes us wonder if his intention all along was to victimize this couple," said Lt. Todd Hutchinson of the Titusville Police Department.
Police say this isn't an ordinary purse snatching and they want to find the man in the photograph.
"To victimize this woman who just lost her husband, it's just unbelievable," Hutchinson said.
And instead of receiving praise and accolades, if police find this man he could now be getting arrested for stealing from a couple in their most dire hour.
The Circle K is right next to I-95, so it's possible the suspect could have just been passing through Brevard County. Police say he was driving a blue Ford F-150 pickup truck and had a woman with him.
WFTV
