Читать Новости из прошлого на английском языке. ВЫПУСК №6 - Анна Пигарёва

By Natalya Krainova

Staff writer

An elderly Moscow woman and her daughter are facing up to 10 years in prison for purportedly using a stun device to rob a company offering a knitting course in which the daughter had enrolled, city police said.

The daughter paid 10,000 rubles ($360) for the knitting classes but became disenchanted with the course and demanded a refund, police said in a statement.

«We have information that they weren’t satisfied with the quality of teaching,» police spokesman Anatoly Lastovetsky said of the mother and daughter.

Police identified the two women only by their first names and the first initial of their last names: Svetlana A., 35, and Iraida A., 73.

With the aim of retrieving Svetlana’s money, the two women went to the office of the company running the knitting courses on 1st Ulitsa Yamskogo Polya, near the Belorusskaya metro station in northern Moscow.

The company secretary asked the women to draw up a written request for a refund addressed to the company’s director, a common requirement for reimbursement in Russia.

The two women, however, demanded their money back immediately. After the secretary refused, the elderly woman pulled an electric-shock device from her purse and stunned the employee with the device, police said.

The two women then snatched the secretary’s purse, which contained 34,000 rubles ($1,200), and fled the office, according to police.

After recovering from the electric shock, the secretary reported the incident to police, who detained the two suspects at their apartment shortly thereafter.

Police opened a robbery investigation Thursday, the city police said.1