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Woman with stolen credit card arrested

Police say the card came from a 78-year-old victim of a purse snatching last month.

By NICOLE JOHNSON and STEVE THOMPSON
Published December 9, 2005

A 42-year-old Pasco County woman was arrested Tuesday, accused of trying to use a credit card stolen in a Tarpon Springs purse snatching.

Lori Brockney Milburn is not the suspect in a Nov. 5 purse snatching at a Tarpon Springs Publix, Pasco County sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said Wednesday.

But Milburn did try to use one of the elderly victim's stolen credit cards the next day at the Bealls Department Store on State Road 54 in Pasco, he said.

Milburn, of 9310 Whitman Lane in Port Richey, faces charges of identity theft and attempted fraudulent use of a credit card. She was being held in the Pasco County jail Wednesday in lieu of $15,000 bail.

While trying to use the card, Tobin said, Milburn was with a man who has used credit cards stolen in a Nov. 7 purse snatching at a Publix in New Port Richey. The man's name is edited from Milburn's arrest report, but he is listed there as a co-defendant. Investigators do not think the man committed the Tarpon Springs robbery, Tobin said, and the victim in the New Port Richey case did not identify him as her thief, either.

Mona C. Miller, the victim in the Tarpon Springs case, has mostly recovered from the encounter. The 78-year-old tried to hold on to the snatcher's car door and was dragged 10 to 15 feet.

She was taken to Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs, where she spent almost three weeks undergoing rehabilitation for a fractured pelvis and some nasty abrasions.

"I'm doing good," said Miller, a retired medical assistant from Holiday. "I barely had to have rehabilitation."

She was released the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, said Miller's daughter Wanda J. Alderman, who lives in Holiday.

"She's using a walker now," Alderman said. "Maybe by Christmas she'll be off."

Miller said she has since put the incident behind her and continues to shop at the Tarpon Mall Publix.

"I don't even think about it anymore," she said. The thief made off with the purse and its contents: credit cards, pictures, an appointment book, an address book and $14 in cash.

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 18:32:19]