A Texas couple escaped being robbed by two men wearing clown masks with a machete by giving them a beatdown that included using their grandchild's scooter as a weapon.

Aretha Cardinal and her husband Joseph Nelson said the altercation happened while they sat in their car in the driveway of their Texas City home early on Friday evening.



"I'm sitting here talking to my wife and the next thing I know," said Nelson, "when I look up, I see somebody running towards me with this white clown mask on and a machete."

"He reached his hand through the window, put it on my throat," Nelson said of one of the suspects.

"Dude," Nelson said he told the man, "you serious, you trying to rob me with a machete?"

"It was really scary," related Cardinal, "it was either us or them, you know and not us. You're not gonna steal no money, we ain't got no money!"

A struggle ensued, and Nelson ended up chasing one of the suspects with the machete they had been threatened to rob them with.

Cardinal also jumped into the fray by grabbing her granddaughter's scooter and beating the would-be thieves with it.

"Any weapon is good for me if I can get you off me and my husband," said Cardinal, "that's what I'm going to do. I used the scooter, broke it in half."

The couple's daughter had called the police in the meantime, and when they arrived they arrested the two suspects on the spot.

"Me and my husband held them down, and you know, commenced to beatin' them, until the law's came," said Cardinal.

Police identified the suspects as Jose Lugo and Luis Jimenez, who were charged with aggravated robbery.

Here's a local news video on the bizarre attack: