To the voters of Minneapolis, Mark Andrew was the guy who came in second in last month’s mayoral election. To three robbers, he was just a mark.

Andrew, 63, needed nine stitches to close a head wound suffered Thursday when, according to police, two female teenagers beat him after their male friend snatched Andrew’s iPhone from a coffee shop table and ran.

When Andrew gave chase, the two females allegedly jumped him and walloped him with a collapsible metal nightstick, police said.

Although the attack took place outside a Starbucks at the busy Mall of America and was witnessed by multitudes of shoppers, nobody intervened, Andrew said.

“Hundreds of people saw it,” he said in a telephone interview. “Nobody came while I was getting assaulted. Whatever the reason, it was sad. It’s a sad commentary.”

“It was a very brazen assault,” Vic Poyer, deputy chief of Bloomington police, said of the incident about 5:35 p.m. at a Starbucks in the West Market of the mall.

Letajia Shapree Cutler Cain, 18, of Brooklyn Park was charged Friday with two counts of aiding and abetting aggravated robbery and a count of aiding and abetting second-degree assault.

She was being held at the Hennepin County Jail with bail set at $100,000, and her first court appearance is scheduled for Monday.

A 17-year-old female was also taken into custody. She is a juvenile, and officials have not released her name.

As Cain allegedly gouged Andrew’s face with her fingernails, he tried to restrain the two and the younger female beat him with the nightstick, similar to the ones police carry.

As she struck him repeatedly, she kept yelling: “I’m going to kill you! Let me go or I’m going to kill you!” the criminal complaint contends.

Andrew said he believed the 17-year-old meant every word.

“In my estimation, these kids are damaged,” he said. “They have to be held accountable. The juvenile may be too far gone. She was extremely violent. I believe she was trying to kill me, and her actions supported her statement. She was swinging as hard as she could.”

Police were searching for their accomplice. Poyer said the investigation was concentrating on a couple of suspects.

As the man fled, he dropped Andrew’s Apple iPhone 4s.

Andrew heads GreenMark, a marketing firm. He also was a member of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and chairman of the state DFL Party. This year, he ran for mayor of Minneapolis; he came in second in a field of 35 candidates, losing to city council member Betsy Hodges.

Andrew said the theft, chase and assault unfolded quickly.

“I just hung up the phone. I was taking notes, New Year’s resolution-type notes, before I went home,” he said. “The phone was out. I was writing handwritten notes, planning my 2014, and the kid just snatched the phone.

“Somebody takes my phone, I’m going after them,” he continued. “I bolted out the door in hot pursuit and two women outside the doorway jumped me to slow me down, but they saw I was going to break through and they attacked me from behind.”

He said that to his knowledge, only one customer in the Starbucks told police she saw the incident, “and only because the two women accused me of attacking them, and the witness came forward and told police that wasn’t what happened,” Andrew said.

Soon after the assault started, mall security officers arrived and took the two women into custody.

Cain allegedly told police after her arrest that she and the other two had gone to the Starbucks on the second floor of the Mall of America on Thursday to determine if it was “sweet.”

“When asked to explain further what this characterization meant, she indicated that they were determining whether the shop would provide an opportunity to steal property from customers,” Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Elizabeth Kilb Stofferahn wrote in a criminal complaint.

David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.