A gutsy, 28-year-old who is studying for the bar exam took the law into her own hands when she followed a crook who snatched her wallet on a crowded subway car and called the cops, police sources and the woman said Thursday.
Nasrin Moznu, a law clerk, was on her way home to the Bronx on a busy northbound No. 6 train and was holding a brown Guess bag with a strap over her shoulder at about 7 p.m. Wednesday.
“I noticed some pushing and tugging,” she said. “I looked and my bag was opened and I closed it.”
The man standing next to her at the time said something and she thought he was apologizing for bumping into her, she said.
There was more pushing and tugging at the next subway stop, where the man got off the train. That’s when she noticed that she had been robbed.
“I noticed my wallet was in his hand and my pocketbook was opened,” she said.
She got off at the Cyprus Ave. exit to call 911 – only to come face to face with the pickpocket.
“Lo and behold when I got off at Cypress I saw him getting off,” she said. “I said to him, ‘You took my wallet, give it back please.”
The man then started yelling at her, insisting he didn’t take rob her.
“All I am asking please I don’t want problems, I want my wallet,” the adrenaline filled woman told him.
She called 911 from the platform while the man continued yelling as she tried to talk to the operator.
“I don’t know if I was nervous or shaking but I did cry,” she said. “I felt intimidated by him when he was yelling at me.”
When police arrived, they searched the man, later identified as Alphonso Jones, 49, but didn’t find anything on him, police sources said. They found her credit card in a trashcan nearby, which Moznu considers a lucky break.
“If it wasn’t for the credit card in the garbage and the fact that I saw him with my wallet in his hand he would have gotten away with it,” she said.
Jones was arrested and charged with grand larceny. He has six prior arrests, but they are all sealed.
“I want to see him go to jail,” Moznu said, calling Jones a “skillful thief.” “I think he’s been doing this for a long time to many people.”