Police nabbed a suspect Monday after an elderly woman’s purse was snatched outside a busy convenience store on U.S. 61 North.

The victim, about 80, was leaving the Super Jr. around 11:15 a.m. when a man reached into her new-model Chrysler, grabbed her purse off her shoulder and fled into nearby woods toward Culkin Road, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said.

The suspect was cut off by Vicksburg police officers who were near the scene – only a few hundred yards outside city limits – and caught in a yard on Culkin Road.

&#8220Knowing that area, there wasn’t but one place he could go,” said Vicksburg Police Sgt. Brad Derrington, who along with officer Riley Nelson made the arrest. &#8220We found a spot and crouched down and he walked right up on us.”

The suspect, identified as Frederick Epps, 38, 25 Greenhill Place, was turned over to the sheriff’s department and was in the Warren County Jail without bond this morning.

Chief Deputy Jay McKenzie said authorities did not have a precise age of the victim. She was treated by paramedics at the scene for a scrape on her arm but not hospitalized, said Pace, who added there was no indication of a weapon being used.

&#8220She had made it to her car and was just about to close her door when he reached in,” Pace said. &#8220Actually, several customers at the store realized what had happened when she screamed for help and initially they began chasing the individual into the woods.”

The woman’s billfold was recovered in the woods, he said, but the purse had not been found.

Pace called the case &#8220very unusual” for his department. Since 2001, the sheriff’s department has handled 10 robbery cases of all types, and none in the past year and a half.

Police took four reports of purse-snatching cases inside the city limits in 2005.

&#8220We don’t have many of them,” Derrington said. &#8220Unless it’s someone with a chemical-abuse problem, and then they’ll do something like rob someone in the daylight at a store with 20 witnesses in front of them.”