An approximately 30-year-old man tried to rob a man about 40 years his senior outside the Thriftway supermarket at 4301 Walnut Street on Sunday evening, Philadelphia Police said last night. Detective Thomas Strzepek of the Philadelphia Police Department's West Detectives Division said the man in his 70s was leaving the supermarket at 6:30 p.m. when he was approached by his eventual assailant. The younger man reportedly asked the elderly man for a quarter. The elderly man responded, "You're a young man and you look like you're healthy -- why don't you go get a job?" The elderly man then walked back to his car and entered it. Before he could drive away, however, the younger man jumped into the car on top of the older man and the two began to struggle. The younger man ripped the older man's pockets open, apparently searching for money to steal. The older man managed to scratch his assailant's face before the latter escaped on foot. The robber found no money to take. The elderly man described his assailant as a black male approximately 30 years old, 5'6" tall and weighing 200 pounds, who wore a white "muslim-type" cap and a blue corduroy jumpsuit. In an unrelated incident, University Police received a report of an unknown person breaking a window at Troy's Restaurant on the 100 block of South 39th Street at 12:07 a.m. yesterday.
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