News 12 First at Five, June 26, 2009

HARLEM, Ga. --- A Harlem grandmother says she was kidnapped from the grocery store, then beaten and left for dead a state away. Now investigators are looking for her attacker.

Harlem police say it happened at the IGA in Harlem shortly after 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon. A few hours later, police say they found 62-year-old Patricia Malpass naked in the woods off Highway 25 in Greenwood, South Carolina.

We spoke to Patricia today. Visibly shaken, beaten, and bruised, she didn't want to show her face on camera--but she did want you to see her scars.

"She can't sleep, scared to death to close her eyes. Scared to death to walk out the door. She's physically and mentally beaten." Jamie Malpass says he almost lost his mother Wednesday night after she went to the grocery store.

Patricia says when she first got to the IGA Grocery Store, she saw the suspect watching her. She says she then got a few groceries, left and drove away, and that is when the suspect attacked her.

"Jumped from the third row of her car to the second row of her car, stuck a gun to her head and told her do not stop, keep driving," says Jamie.

Police say she did, and she also called 911. GPS tracked the call to Appling-Harlem Road, but she was gone.

Later, Jamie says he got the call police had found his mother near some woods a state away in Greenwood, South Carolina.

"He drug her down in the the woods, made her strip down naked in the woods. She's begging for her life and he just starts slamming her head into the tree over and over. She's blacking out, comes back to, as she's coming back to he picks her up and starts all over again."

Jamie says his mother was left for dead.

Thankfully, the mother of six came to and found police near her abandoned car.

"It's a complicated case," says Harlem Police Chief Jesse Bowman, but he says his department will solve it. "We're not dropping it, we're not putting it on the back shelf, we're going to take this until it's over."

The family says they believe someone is targeting Patricia, but they don't know why. Jamie says someone broke into Patricia's home Monday and stole a safe and some money. They also say Patricia found a rattlesnake in her car Tuesday. Then, Wednesday, she was kidnapped.

Police say they do have some people in the case they want to talk to. They've already viewed surveillance video from inside the IGA store Wednesday. They say the video shows Patricia going inside, getting the items she says she picked up, and then leaving. However, police say the store did not have cameras outside where the attack happened.

Police are working with Patricia to possibly come up with a sketch of the suspect. He's described as a white male between 45 to 55 years old, 6 feet tall with a skinny build, with short dark or gray hair and a blue and white tribal tattoo around his right wrist.

GBI, SLED, the Columbia County Sheriff's Office and the Greenwood County Sheriff's Office are also assisting in the case.

Anyone with any information is asked to call law enforcement.

Harlem Police: 706-556-6262
Greenwood County Sheriff's Office: 864-943-8052