A 73-year-old great-grandmother suffered severe bruises and had to have stitches in her face and hand after a man attacked her at a car wash in Athens.

She was vacuuming her 2008 Hyundai Santa Fe when the incident happened last Wednesday, according to Channel 2 Action News.

Police said she was approached by a man between the ages of 25 and 35. He pulled a gun and demanded her car and possessions.

“He hit me on the head again,” she said, “that's where I got my stitches.”

He grabbed her purse, pushed her from the car and drove away.

“When she inquired what he was doing,” Athens police spokesman Geoffrey Gilland said, “he pointed a pistol at her and hit her with it, struck her with the pistol."

He also had a warning.

“He had a gun,” she said, “it was wrapped in his shirt and he showed it to me and he said, ‘You don't want to die today, and I said no I don’t,' and he took off."

But the victim also saw another side.

“I guess I'm thankful to be alive, cause he could have shot me.”

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Barbed wire lines a recreation area at the Stewart Detention Center, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in Lumpkin, Ga. The Stewart Detention Center sits in Lumpkin, a rural town about 140 miles southwest of Atlanta and right next to the Georgia-Alabama state line. The city's 1,172 residents are outnumbered by the roughly 1,650 male detainees that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said were being held in the detention center in late November. (David Goldman/AP)

Credit: David Goldman/AP