‘Fed up’ with stealing: 88-year-old liquor store owner shoots alleged shoplifter

“I did what I had to do, and I hope word gets out on the street that I’m fed up and I’m not taking it anymore,” she told the New York Post. “You’ve got to stick up for yourself sometimes.”

Boyce said two men entered her store last week, and one headed toward the vodka section while the other approached her “in a manner that she knew” he was going to steal, according to the report. She said she got her mother’s .38 Smith & Wesson snub-nosed revolver and put it on the counter.

One of the men, identified as Ramon Fisher, got some bottles of Crown Royal and then reportedly “lunged” at the 115-pound woman. He then ran from the store, Boyce said.

She fired the gun at Fisher, hitting him in the back, though she had “never shot a gun before.”

“I did what I had to do,” Boyce, a widow, said. “After you’ve been played for a fool by people stealin’ from you for years, you get fed up. And don’t put me in the category of a little old lady. I know how to take care of myself.”

Police officers arrived at the scene, and Boyce volunteered to go to the police station.

“I went down, got my mugshot taken, got out on bond, and came right back to the store,” Boyce said. “I got some people to help me, but it took us to 1 a.m. to clean up all the wine that spilled everywhere.”

She was released on a $10,000 bond, and police confiscated her gun and told her she might not get it back for two years.

“I told ’em, ’Shit, I might be dead by then,’” Boyce said. “But the law’s the law.”

Fisher is recovering from his injuries at a local hospital.