A Marine who lost his right arm and leg in Iraq said he and his wife had to try to fend off five thugs who mugged them last month in Washington, D.C.
Lance Cpl. Mark Beyers, 27, has been finishing his rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after being wounded by a roadside bomb on Aug. 26, 2005, in Hit, Iraq.
“I got hit in Hit,” joked Beyers, a reservist with the 3rd Battalion 25th Marines, based in Buffalo, N.Y.
His wife, Denise, 26, decided to take her husband out to dinner July 22 at a restaurant in northwest Washington. About midnight, the Elma, N.Y., couple was walking back to their car when they came across five men, said Denise Beyers, who recently left the Marine Corps as a corporal.
At first, the men were friendly and asked the couple for cigarettes. Then they told her, “Give me your purse, give me your purse.”
Two men went after her and three went after her husband, who was not wearing a prosthetic arm and whose prosthetic leg was clearly visible because he was wearing shorts.
Denise Beyers fought to hold on to her purse, but her attackers grabbed her by the mouth and threw her to the ground. They then dumped the contents of her purse on the ground and took off with $300 to $400 in cash that her ****** had wired to her.
While this was going on, the other three men told her husband to take his watch off.
“And he said, ‘How the hell do you expect me to take my watch off with one arm?’” she said. When they tried to grab it from him, he shoved them away, Denise Beyers said.
Mark Beyers was able to deflect his attackers’ punches, saying that when you only have one arm, “It gets pretty strong, believe me.” When the ****** was over, none of the three men landed a punch against Mark Beyers.
His wife, who suffered cuts and bruises in the ******, said no one came to their aid during the ******.
