"I Have 8 Kids, You’re Not Getting to Me" — Woman Snatches Pickpocket's Ponytail in Viral Video

There's nothing quite like a vacation abroad. Especially if you take your family to visit a bucket list place, like Venice, Italy. But for one family, what was supposed to be an idyllic stroll through a historic city turned into a viral video moment after one of them was targeted by a pickpocket.

In a video now gone viral on TikTok, a woman holds the ponytail of a pickpocket in Venice, giving her a lecture as she drags the young woman to the police for some justice.

Here's what we know about the shocking video and whether or not the woman was able to retrieve the item stolen from her.

According to TikTok user Karis McElroy, she and her family members were on vacation in lovely Venice. In a video she shared to TikTok, Karis explained the background via a screenshot of a text between her mom and someone else, with her mom writing, "We landed in Venice. It is so beautiful. Unlike any city I have ever seen. The only way to get around is with water taxi or walking."

Unfortunately, that was when the perfection ended.

The text continues, "When we were looking for our hotel, my purse was stolen out of my zipped-up book bag. We have spent the afternoon dealing with this."

Someone responded to the text, wishing that karma would catch up to whoever stole the items. But the McElroy family doesn't need karma: they have mom.

In the video, you can see that Karis's mom has snatched the alleged pickpocket by the ponytail, and is giving her a tongue-lashing as she drags her, by the hair, to an authority who can help.

She yells at the young woman, "You stole my purse with my passport in it," to which the young woman responds by yelling a few words and then screaming wordlessly at her.

The mom scoffs, "Girl, I have eight kids. You're not getting to me."

The young woman tries to calm the mom down, but she demands that the police be called.

Luckily, Karis's text explains, someone found the purse and turned it in, so all was not lost.

But the tense viral moment has many people cheering on the woman with the quick hands, and we don't mean the pickpocket.

In the comment section of Karis's video, one user laughed, "she sounded so composed over text, didn’t expect her to have the pickpocket by the HAIR."

Another opined, "Criminals in other countries forget that Americans don’t have free healthcare….we will defend ourselves."

Many users marveled at the audacity that the pickpocket was encouraging the mom to call police, while one user wrote, "Oh she learned the American way that day. We are always on edge and we are not playing."

While it's unclear exactly what happened prior to the video, it would appear that justice was served in the form of Karis's mom receiving her items back, regardless of the circumstances.

And if the young woman is, indeed, a pickpocket, she probably learned the hard way that a ponytail isn't the best hairstyle to cruise the crowds with.