Teen powerlifter rescues mother from attacker

Mugger reportedly gave 18-year-old Masina Rie Tupea black eye and dislocated her mother’s jaw

A teen powerlifter tackled a mugger who attacked her mother in a bid to snatch her purse in New Orleans (Facebook/Masina Rie Tupea)

A teen powerlifter from Hawaii took on a mugger after he attacked her family and dislocated her mother’s jaw in New Orleans.

Masina Rie Tupea, 18, who was visiting New Orleans with her family, said that they were walking down Magazine Street when a man sprinted up to her mother Luisa and hit her in the face, dislocating her jaw, as he tried to snatch her purse.

“He literally came out of nowhere,” Ms Tupea told Nola newspaper. “He punched my mom square in the jaw, and she went down almost immediately.”

The mugger then tried to flee but Ms Tupea, who is a powerlifter, did not want him to get away. “I needed to protect my family,” she said. “That’s all I could think about.”

She ran after the mugger and made him trip, But he immediately got up to punch her as well. “When the dude hit me in the face, I pretty much immediately crumbled,” she said in a Facebook post on 30 December.

“I was screaming for my dad thinking that the guy got away. I wasn’t necessarily hurt but I was shocked. It wasn’t until I heard my dad say ‘Get up. Get over here. And get this guy,’ I realised that dude was still around and I could get my redemption,” she added.

Ms Tupea said that she then got up even though she couldn’t see anything through her left eye and found that her father was chasing the mugger around the car.

“The guy took his chances with me cause he thought I would crumble again,” she wrote on Facebook. “He was wrong.” She tackled him, dodged his punch and then tackled him again and pinned him to the ground.

“This guy had hurt my family and wanted me to let him go. I screamed in his face ‘you messed with the wrong family’, ‘you’re lucky my dad is so far away’, ‘you’re lucky these people are here cause my dad is crazy’.”

“And people were staring so I yelled ‘he punched my mom in the face and punched me in the eye’,” she added.

Ms Tupea pinned the mugger to the ground till she saw police lights arriving. Several bystanders tried to calm her down while she waited for the police, she said. “They tried to get me off of the guy but I insisted ‘I can’t leave please just let me protect my family and be here’.”

Ms Tupea holds a record for deadlifting 319 pounds at the age of 15.

In September, the Great Northeast Athletic Conference named her Volleyball Rookie of the Week for her play at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is a student.

The teenager said that the most important lesson from the incident was to not give up. “The most important lesson I took away was you can get hit but you need to remember to get back up,” she said. “Cause I know if I had stayed down that I would have hated myself for being a quitter.”

A suspect arrested in relation to the mugging was identified as 36-year-old Augustus Taylor, according to Hawaii News Now.

Police said that he has been jailed on suspicion of one count of purse snatching and two counts of simple battery. His bond is set at $40,000 (£29,500).