ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — St. Petersburg police are on the hunt for a man who they say violently robbed a woman Monday afternoon.

“People are pretty shocked by it,” Charlie Walker, who lives nearby, said. “There’s a blood trail in the street. It’s pretty crazy.”

Walker said it was a typical Monday afternoon when he looked outside of his window and saw a man running in plain clothes, rather than athletic wear.

He told News Channel 8 On Your Side he thought it was weird but never expected police to be knocking on his door a few hours later.

“I was just working in my office when I saw him run by,” Walker said. “It was about two-thirty in the afternoon.”

“I thought it was weird at the time. I didn’t think anything of it,” Walker continued. “Then the cops came back by around 5 o’clock to tell me what happened.”

“[I] put two and two together [and] figured out I saw the guy,” he concluded.

So what happened?

Investigators said a 65-year-old woman was going on a walk in the Old Southeast neighborhood in St. Petersburg as a man passed by her.

“You see him in the surveillance video, he kind of turns around and comes back,” St. Petersburg Police Department’s Yolanda Fernandez said. “He asked if he can use her phone.”

“She said, ‘No, she doesn’t have her phone with her’,” Fernandez continued.

St. Petersburg police said the women then tried to walk away, never expecting what would come next.

“He attacks her,” Fernandez explained. “He punches her several times.”

“He cuts her arm, she’s bleeding, and then he forcibly takes her hand and puts it in his mouth so he can force her rings off of her hand,” she continued.

Investigators said those rings were the 65-year-old’s engagement ring and wedding band.

The suspect is described as approximately 30 to 35 years old, 5 feet, 9 inches tall, with a full
beard and a short Afro hairstyle.

Police said he was wearing a black T-shirt and black pants at the time of the attack.

Anyone with information should contact the St. Petersburg Police Department at 727-893-7780 or text SPPD and your tip to TIP411.