Representatives of the Pike County Little Theatre were assaulted and mugged while standing outside of the theater on State Street shortly after a board meeting Monday night.
Ryan Temple of Magnolia said two men approached him and three other board members and asked for a cigarette lighter. When Temple told them that he didn’t smoke, one of the men punched his friend Shane Adams in the face, knocking him to the ground.
“We all just backed up,” Temple said. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
The other man then approached Temple’s wife, Jennifer, and grabbed her purse.
“He stood really close in her face and just grabbed her purse, so, she just let it slip off her shoulder,” he said.
The two men ran east on State Street and turned north on Front Street.
McComb Police detective Deska Varnado said officers responded to the incident just before 9 p.m., minutes after the assault was reported.
Adams was taken to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, where he received six stitches in his lip.
Officers recovered Jennifer Temple’s purse about an hour later in an abandoned building near the theater, Ryan Temple said. All of the contents were still in the purse except for $46 in cash and two bottles of non-narcotic prescription medications.
Temple said that he and his friends always stand outside of the theater after their regular board meetings and they have never had any problems.
“I’ve never seen anything personally like that before,” Temple said. “I’ve always felt relatively safe down there. My wife’s pretty shaken right now. She’s very nervous and scared to be outdoors at night.”
The two men are described as black males in their late teens or early 20s with slender builds. One of them wore dark-colored shorts, a white tank-top and a ball cap. The other also wore dark-colored shorts and a white shirt.
