An 85-year-old pensioner Dorothy Holmes attacked a chisel-wielding thief with her RTE TV Guide at a Dublin grocery store. She told the Daily Star newspaper, “I can’t promise I wouldn’t do it again."

Holmes was in the Mace convenience store on St Gabriel’s Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3 when drug-addict thief Edward Hutton (27) robbed the store. The elderly local woman rolled up her magazine and let the thief have it.

She told the Star, “I’m an old lady…I wasn’t ever a wrestler or anything like that…but I don’t see why these people think they can steal what the rest of us have to work hard for.

“It was a spur of the moment thing.

“I felt a bit foolish afterwards as I stood there with my torn magazine waiting in the queue to pay for it.”

Hutton and another man entered the shop wearing hoods. Armed with a chisel Hutton went behind the counter and demanded cash. When the cashier tried to push him away Hutton threatened him with the chisel.

Holmes, who was in line at the store, hit the thief in the face with the magazine.

The thieves fled with $885 (€675). However, they were remanded and Hutton was sentenced to four years in prison at the Dublin Circuit Court earlier this week.