SAN JOSE — An elderly man who said he pleaded to no avail for help from bystanders managed to beat back his wife’s alleged assailant Sunday night, holding down the suspect in front of his home until Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies arrived and arrested her.

Yousef Youkhaneh, 82, told this news organization that after wrestling with the alleged burglar and being dragged onto McKee Road in front of his home, he looked up only to see people slow down their cars not to help, but to take photos of the struggle, then drive on. No one stopped to give him aid, he said.

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“I said, “Call police, somebody help me! I am tired,” Youkhaneh recalled from his backyard Monday afternoon, where the incident began. “Nobody did anything.”

After 10 minutes, he said, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s deputies arrived to arrest Rehnu Singh, a 50-year-old San Jose woman already on probation for burglary. She was booked into Santa Clara County jail for investigation of elder abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted burglary and probation violation, said Sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Glennon.

Glennon said sheriff’s deputies had been called around 5:50 p.m. in response to an apparent assault of a woman by a man in the street, but soon discovered otherwise.

Youkhaneh said he was inside his home going over paperwork when he heard his wife screaming for help outside the door to the couple’s backyard. He rushed out to see his 76-year-old wife Christina Youkhaneh with a bloodied head after Singh had allegedly hit her with a heavy branch. The gash required eight stitches.

Drops of his wife’s blood were still visible on the back door and pavement Monday as he recalled her laying on the ground, exhorting him not to let Singh get away.

“She had tools in her hand and she tried to hit me,” said the retired auto body shop owner, showing bite marks left on his hand from the attack. “But I didn’t let her go.”

As they headed out along his driveway that leads straight into traffic, Youkhaneh managed to grab Singh’s ankle. By the time they got to the sidewalk bordering the traffic, “I fell down and she fell down,” he said, lifting his left pant leg to show his skinned knee. “But I didn’t let her go. I held onto her with all my power.”

Singh screamed to witnesses: “I didn’t do it; the man did it!” Youkhaneh said. He looked up and saw people — across the street, on the sidewalk, and many slowing down their cars to take photos with their phones, and he called for help.

“Why didn’t they help?” he asked Monday. “What kind of people is this taking pictures? Maybe someday it happens to them.”

“When deputies arrived, they were literally in the middle of the street,” Glennon said. “(The husband) was able to hold her down, a woman half his age. … The elderly are seen as easier victims, and sometimes they are targeted due to being less likely to fight back, which was not the case in this instance.

“We definitely don’t encourage people to engage people like this, but obviously in this situation his wife was under attack so he had to take those actions.”

The sheriff’s office recommends that in similar situations, rather than confronting a burglar, people should retreat into a locked room and call 911, he said.

George Youkhaneh, 52, of Buena Park, said he’d talked to his mother around noon Monday about her planned visit that evening to Southern California, where he lives with his wife and 6-year-old son. But he said his mother had mentioned nothing of the incident.

By mid-afternoon Monday, he’d still been unable to reach his parents — or his younger brother in Sacramento.

“Apparently, she didn’t tell me everything, just that she was getting ready to come’’ and visit, he said, still shaking over the news. “I don’t think they want their kids to worry.’’

George Youkhaneh said his family arrived in the U.S. from Iran in 1979, heading first to Chicago for about a year before moving to San Jose around 1980.

He recalled that his father had told him that he’d once been held up at gunpoint in the Windy City by robbers who fled after the men determined his father had no valuables on him.

Other than that, he said, “Nothing like this has ever happened to us in our family.’’

The Pioneer High School graduate said his parents own the three bedroom home on McKee Road near Eastside Drive where the attack occurred.

He described his father as “very active and in good shape — he takes care of himself’’ and needs no medications. His mother, however, has had heart problems and has had several stents implanted.

Yousef Youkhaneh acknowledged that neither he nor his wife had called their sons about the incident.

“My wife is alive,” he said. “This is the only thing I need from God.”