Lance Price was stabbed and he still winces when he walks, yet he has just one regret about chasing down two teenagers who snatched a woman’s purse.
He wishes he could have helped the boy who speared him in the chest.
Price, who received a neighborhood hero award from the Denver Police Department and a $1,000 check from the Daniels Fund on Monday, chased two teenage boys from a Safeway parking lot and found them hiding in an apartment stairwell.
He coaxed the boys to hand over the purse and head back with him to the east Denver parking lot where they had preyed on a 65-year-old woman who turned her back as she put groceries in her car.
“What are you doing stealing from an old lady?” Price asked the boys. “It’s not nice.”
“They didn’t seem like they wanted any more trouble than they were already in,” Price said.
Price put his arm around one of the boys and told him it wasn’t the end of his life, just a purse-snatching, and he should turn himself in to police.
“He told me I know nothing about his life, which is true,” but Price thought they were connecting.
Then a squad car raced past, and the teen panicked, stiffened and paled.
“The next thing I know, boom!” said Price, who thought he had been punched until he felt blood pouring from his chest.
He spent six days in the hospital after the July 1 stabbing, had two surgeries on his liver and still has shortness of breath. His wife, Dionna, supported him with her hand on his back as he received the award at police headquarters.
“I don’t feel like a hero,” he said. “All I got her was an empty purse covered in blood.”
The boys apparently dumped the purse’s contents into a plastic sack before they handed it over, Detective Todd Cole said. The teens – 15 or 16 years old and about 5-foot-6, one Latino with blond-spiked hair and the other, the stabber, black and wearing a hat – have not been arrested.
Price, whose 12-year-old son, Keegan, sat nearby, said he hoped that if his son got into trouble, someone would try to help him instead of writing him off “as a lost cause.”
“I used to be like that kid. I was a troublemaker. I was one of the lucky ones – I got scared straight.”
The woman whose purse was snatched was too shaken to attend Price’s award ceremony, police said. She had minor injuries from falling in the parking lot as she tried to run after the teens.
Police said Price’s actions were rare and commendable, but not something they recommend. Instead, citizens should take detailed mental notes to help officers track down criminals, Cole said.
Price said the award helped confirm his belief in “doing the right thing.”
“When you see somebody a’hollering for help, you can’t just stand there,” he said. “You’ve got to help them.”
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
