Three Women Attack 78-Year-Old Cancer Patient with Pepper Spray

Angelina Bellissima, a 78-year-old cancer patient, parked her car on South Smedley Street in Philadelphia so she and her daughter could unload groceries.

That is when three women, who police say were stalking Bellissima, knocked her down, pepper-sprayed her in the face, punched her, took her keys, and drove off in her vehicle.

“I just felt like I was going to die,” Bellissima told local news station WPVI.

“I hear a scream, ‘Help me, help me!” recalled Angela Palumbo, Bellissima’s daughter.

The three women initially asked Bellissima for a ride, and then attacked her after she said no.

“I just feel them come back, like hit me from the back, and I feel this pepper spray in my face,” she said. “They threw me to the ground, punched me in the face. They grabbed the keys out of my hand, and I heard them saying, ‘Open the doors, open the doors.'”

“When I saw my mom in a ball crying with her face full of pepper spray, I just lost it. For somebody to come along and just hurt her like that, there’s no pain, there’s no pain like that,” Palumbo said.

Bellissima also suffered from a stress-induced heart attack and she just regained sight in her right eye.

“I’m scared to death to go out because they’re not caught yet, I really am,” she said. “Usually I’m pretty strong. Let me tell you, I’m fighting cancer, but this time I’m scared because I know they’re still out there.”

“They need to pay for what they did to her because she doesn’t deserve this,” Palumbo said. “She just got done cancer radiation, five surgeries — and now this.”