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SALT LAKE CITY — Two FedEx workers are being called heroes after they chased down a suspected purse thief.
According to charging documents, deliverymen Allen Fratto and Carl Christensen were in a store parking lot at 3938 W. 3500 South on Aug. 21 when they heard a woman screaming, "Stop him! He has my purse!"
The documents say a man had pointed a gun 61-year-old Carla Miner and demanded her purse. She initially refused to give it up, so the thief hit her.
"I think in situations like that people can have a couple of different reactions: either fight or flight," Miner said. "And my choice was to fight, and I just said to him, ‘No!'"
The man, later identified as 23-year-old Christopher Buscaino, then ripped the purse off her arm, breaking the strap, picked it up off the ground and ran.
"I just heard her scream, ‘Stop him!'" Christensen said. Sitting in his delivery truck, he looked out the windshield and saw the man running straight for Fratto, who had just delivered a package.
"I just saw the barrel of the gun," Fratto said. "He pointed the gun at me as he was running towards me."
Realizing the weapon was just a BB gun, Fratto stuck out his leg and tripped the man.
"He tripped and kind of skidded into the rock, pretty much head-first into the rock," Christensen recalled.
But the man got up and ran again, so Christensen and Fratto gave chase and tackled him to the ground.
Fratto has road rash on his knees and a scrape on his elbow. "I had him in a headlock," he said. "Carl had him in the chest, in his ribs."
When police arrived, they found several men holding the suspect on the ground.
Police arrested Christopher Buscaino, 23, who originally gave police the name Alex Flores. He was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on numerous charges.
"They definitely came right to my aid, and I don't think we see that often enough," Miner said.
She calls the deliverymen heroes — a title they shrug off.
"(It was) just reaction," Fratto said, "(I) didn't even think about it."
"I don't know if you can go as far as (calling us) heroes," Christensen said. "It's high praise, but we helped out."
Utah State Court records show Buscaino already had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to show up for sentencing on an earlier conviction. He was convicted in 3rd District Court in May of a felony drug possession charge and two misdemeanors — possession of drug paraphernalia and impersonating someone else.
