UPDATE: Auburn police arrest two in connection with Mall purse-snatching

AUBURN — A teenager from Canton said she was attacked and robbed by a masked man Sunday afternoon in the Auburn Mall parking lot. 

Lili-Anne Tyler, 16, and her mother, Jillette Tyler, were leaving the mall around 5 p.m. when the robber approached them as they were walking to their car, the teen said in an email Monday evening.

She said her mother was “letting me drive and as I went ahead of her to get in the car the man had jumped out of his car. I saw the vehicle pull up slowly and didn’t think anything of it. I thought he was just letting us move out of the way.”

She said it was a surprise when he attacked her. 

“As he jumped out of his car he ran up to me yelling ‘give me your purse’. I dropped my other bags holding on to my purse as long as I could,” Lili-Ann said. 

The man pushed her to the ground and her mother out of the way and she finally let go of her purse, she said.

“Everything happened so fast you almost just don’t know what to do,” the girl said.

She said the attack left her with a large scrape on her knee.

Tyler described the attacker as a large white man, around 250 pounds and about 5 feet, 7 inches tall.

“He wore a black sweatshirt and a red bandana around his mouth. It looked as though he was holding something black in his left hand but I couldn’t exactly describe it,” Lili-Ann said.

According to WMTW, police said the vehicle the man was driving was stolen from Lewiston and was later recovered in Lewiston, although the robber has not been caught.