Zach Angert

Zachary Angert went to Butler on Sunday to attend a Christmas party.

He ended up thwarting a would-be Grinch who police say snatched the purse from a woman and took off running, armed with a sizable knife.

“I acted on instinct,” said the 29-year-old Summit Township man. “I saw (the suspect) running and thought to myself, ‘I need to get this guy.’”

Aided by several other people, Angert helped foil the criminal caper but not before being stabbed in a hand.

“They’re all to be commended,” said Butler Deputy Police Chief David Adam of the gang of good Samaritans.

Police arrested the suspected mugger, Zachariah A. Swann, 25, of Butler, who is in the Butler County Prison on $50,000 bail.

Swann is charged with robbery, aggravated assault and two weapons charges for wielding the large fixed-blade knife.

Angert was at the Monroe Hotel, where his wife works as a waitress, for her employee Christmas party. Shortly before 9 p.m., a woman’s screams outside interrupted the holiday spirit.

Angert caught a glimpse of someone running.

“I heard a lady yelling,” he said. “She was saying, ‘Someone just robbed me.’”

Police said the woman had gone to her car, apparently to get something, when Swann allegedly ambushed her.

He snapped up her purse and took off in the 100 block of North Monroe Street, police said.

From a distance, the suspected crook, purse in hand and making a getaway gallop, soon came into Angert’s view.

“The adrenaline started to kick in,” Angert recalled. “I was in a full sprint.”

Others meanwhile were also running, just not as fast as Angert, at the suspected robber, who had since ditched the purse.

Then Angert ran into Swann, who in turn, started to swing and flail his right hand, which held the knife.

“I got stabbed,” Angert said. “I saw it hit me but I didn’t know how bad it was.”

The wound in the palm of his right hand, it turned out, wasn’t too bad.

The defendant assumed a defensive posture against Angert and two or three other men who joined in the confrontation. But the suspect made another run for it.

He would make it only 50 yards before the group of good citizens cornered him in a parking lot. Angert and another man took the lead and went all in, going for the suspect.

“He would not let go of that knife,” Angert said.

But a trio got him on the ground and held him until police arrived.