TEXAS CITY, Texas (FOX 26) — A couple is speaking out after being approached by two men in clown masks armed with a machete.

It was early on Friday morning when Aretha Cardinal and her husband were sitting in a car in the driveway of their Texas City home when they were ambushed by two men wearing clown masks who demanded cash. They threatened her husband with a machete.

"It was really scary, but it was like, it was either us or them, you know, and not us," said Cardinal. "You not gonna steal no money. We ain’t got no money.”

Although threatened with violence, the couple decided to fight back by punching the men and even grabbing her granddaughter’s scooter to hit them and bust their car window.

"Me and my husband held them down, you know, commence to beating them until the laws came," added Cardinal.

Texas City Police arrived and arrested 32-year-old Luis Jimenez and 35-year-old Jose Lugo.


"I’m safe now knowing that they can’t try to hurt nobody else, you know," said Cardinal. "They might go to somebody else that don’t react like us.“

Both Jimenez and Lugo are charged with aggravated robbery and each have a bond set at $100,000.