An American tourist in Venice got the drop on a teen pickpocket, and held her captive by the ponytail for nearly an hour in a tense street standoff that has since gone viral.
American tourist robbed on Venice streets
Christina Cadieu Greene, visiting the Italian city with her husband before departing on a Mediterranean cruise, found herself face-to-face with a 14-year-old who had swiped her purse.
Instead of backing down, Greene latched onto the girl’s hair and refused to let go, even as the young suspect kicked, screamed, and tried everything to break free.
Her daughter, Karis McElroy, later revealed in a TikTok post how her mom managed to track down the culprits and recover her stolen belongings, turning what could have been a nightmare vacation disaster into a win for international victims of theft.
The ordeal began as Greene and her husband tried to navigate through the busy Santa Maria del Giglio district, a part of Venice notorious for petty theft.
Surrounded by three separate groups of people while making her way toward an Airbnb rental, Greene didn’t immediately realize she had been targeted.
By the time she reached her destination, she discovered her bag had been left unzipped.
Missing from it were her purse, passport, credit cards, cash, water bottle, and a pair of AirPods.
Panic quickly set in, as the stolen passport jeopardized not only the trip but the couple’s upcoming cruise.
According to McElroy, her mother sprang into action, using technology to track down the purse thief.
“She was frantic trying to get this back. Her and my stepdad immediately started tracking her purse through her AirPods on Find My Friends and they were able to track it down back to those three girls because my mom already knew, like, these people must have been it,” she explained.
American tourist holds on tight
The digital trail led Greene right back to three teenage girls in the crowd.
Without hesitation, she grabbed one of them by the ponytail and held on. The second girl remained nearby while the third bolted with the stolen purse.
Footage from the confrontation shows Greene, visibly enraged, clenching the girl’s hair as the teen shrieked in protest.
Unmoved, Greene shouted, “You stole my purse with my passport in it. You are not getting away. I’m not stopping, kid. You are not getting away. I have eight kids, you don’t get to me.”
McElroy said her stepfather tried to recover the purse while Greene maintained her iron grip.
In a message later shared on her daughter’s TikTok, Greene admitted, “Something just came over me and I was so angry, and I went after them and grabbed the youngest of the three by the ponytail and wrapped my hand around the ponytail and would not let go.”
@karismcelroy Venice pickpocketers picked the wrong mom to mess with 😂😭 #jet2holiday #foryoupage #pickpocketing #venice
For 50 minutes, the standoff dragged on. Greene wrote, “She would be screaming at me, cussing at me, and I would scream back and tug harder on her hair. I would pull her down and I would pull her up with her hair.”
Venice locals rally around American tourist
Tourists and locals quickly gathered, many cheering Greene on as they recorded the incident.
The Airbnb owner also intervened, calling local police. But the wait for officers stretched on, forcing Greene to continue restraining the girl.
“The man who runs the Airbnb was wonderful,” Greene said in her message. “He came out and called the police, but [it] still took a long time for the police to get there.”
“When the police got there, I released the girl and the [other] one with her went crazy,” she explained.
Pickpockets clash with police
According to Greene, the confrontation escalated as officers finally arrived. The two teens fought aggressively to escape custody, lashing out at police.
One of the girls even managed to violently strike Greene during the melee. As she stood behind an officer, the girl swung a cloth bag around her wrist and hit Greene in the head and face.
Inside the bag was Greene’s own metal water bottle, taken from her purse.
“So it slung over the policeman’s shoulder and hit me on the head and face. I later realized she had my metal water bottle in her bag,” Greene recalled.
“I was bleeding pretty bad. I had a gash on my head and it was running down my face.”
The injury was serious enough that bystanders rushed to help her staunch the blood flow.
“It was so much that my bra was soaked with blood, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and the people around were so, so kind,” Greene detailed.
“They were trying to help me, they were trying to clean me up, so many people were just so very nice at the same time.”
She eventually received medical treatment, requiring her head to be glued and covered with a Steri-Strip. She was also left with bruising and a rash across her face from being scraped by the purse’s fabric.
@karismcelroy Replying to @kennedy STORY TIME #pickpocketing #foryoupage
Meanwhile, the third teen suspect fled on a train, but later abandoned the stolen purse.
According to McElroy, the bag was dropped off at a U.S. liaison office inside an airport.
In another message shown on TikTok, Greene explained how authorities reached out once her passport was returned.
*“My neighbor was calling me and said the police are at our house trying to find me because my passport had been turned in,” she explained. *
“Turns out the thieves had gone straight to the airport with my purse, walked in and turned it in into a liaison office and said they did not want to be identified.”
The only items still missing were her AirPods and around $200 in cash.
The legal gray zone in Venice
Both teenage suspects who were caught were charged with theft before being released on bail, since they were minors.
But Italian officials admit the country’s laws make prosecuting pickpockets—especially young offenders—extremely difficult.
Deputy Chief of the Venice police, Gianni Franzoi, said Secolo d’Italia, “There are now more female pickpockets, drawn to the city by a bubble of legal impunity.”
He explained that Italian law requires not just a formal complaint but also the victim’s presence at the hearing.
With most victims being foreign tourists, few ever return for court dates. As a result, Franzoi said, “So, there are no trials and no convictions.”
