Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 18, 1993 TAG: 9309180271
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Medium
She came up with a serrated knife and a pan of hot gravy.
"It just goes to show you can't always mess with a little woman, because she might not play fair," Rothgeb said Thursday after she chased away two men she believed intended to rob her.
Rothgeb said she wasn't thinking about the potential harm she faced when she threw hot gravy on one man and threatened them both with a knife.
"She more or less ambushed them before they could rob her," said Mike Milnor, an investigator with the Campbell County Sheriff's Department.
Rothgeb said she was in the kitchen of Jeanne's Restaurant on U.S. 460 when she looked out the back window and saw a pickup truck pull into the rear parking lot. As the two men got out of the truck and started walking toward the kitchen door, she saw the driver was holding a knife.
Rothgeb, alone in the restaurant, said she knew she was going to be robbed if she didn't do something.
"I grabbed a knife - a great, big, huge serrated knife," she said.
On her way to the back door to confront them, she saw a pan of gravy on the stove.
"I just spotted the gravy . . . and picked it up. . . . It was the closest thing to Mace I could find," she said.
When the two men opened the door, Rothgeb said, she dumped the sauce on the man with the knife.
"It wasn't boiling, but it was so hot it just sort of stuck to him," she said.
While the man was cursing and recovering from the shock, Rothgeb shook her knife and said to them, "I'll kill you," she said.
With that, she said, the men turned and ran. Rothgeb said she tried to follow the men to get their truck's license number, but she slipped on the gravy and fell.
"By the time I picked myself up, they'd gone," she said.
by CNB