FERRIDAY — The gun was pointed at Helen Brown’s face.

Brown had just arrived home from dropping her son off at work before his 5 a.m. shift Tuesday at River Correctional Facility, but instead of going back to bed, she found herself in the midst of an armed robbery.

When she approached her house on 10th Street, Brown said she saw someone walking by her driveway.

It was a tall, thin person Brown said she believed to be a man. The person was wearing a dark hoodie pulled up over his head and a piece of dark cloth covering his nose and mouth.

“The only thing that was out was his eyes,” Brown said.

At first, Brown said she stayed in the car. When she thought the man was gone, Brown pulled into her driveway and turned off the car.

“I keep my house key and my car key on the same ring,” she said. “So I got out and was looking for my house key.”

As she stepped out of the car, however, Brown said she looked up and saw the man standing there, holding a gun up to her face.

“When I looked up he held that gun up to my nose,” Brown said. “He said, ‘Give me your G—– purse, I say.’”

At first, Brown said she did not think the man was serious, but as he reached for the purse hanging on her shoulder, she knew the armed robbery was really happening.

“I was holding the strap of the purse and he grabbed that purse and took off,” she said. “So when he took off, he took me, too.”

Brown said the man jerked her from her feet and dragged her a short way across the garage, scraping her hands and legs and injuring her knee.

“It was just shocking because I didn’t think anything like that would ever happen to me,” she said. “I’m 74 years old. To do an old person like that I think is just unbelievable.”

Brown called 911 and an ambulance came to take her to the hospital, but Brown said she is still shaken.

Unfortunately, Brown said, this is not the first time something like this has happened to her.

“They come here and do things to my car, they take things out of my yard,” she said. “I don’t ever hear anything back about it.”

The Ferriday Police Department is investigating the theft, and she said Ferriday Police Chief Arthur Lewis came by her house to assure her that his investigators would find the robber, but Brown said she does not feel safe.

Brown has lived in Ferriday since she moved to town to be a teacher in 1966. She raised her children in the town and, after 46 years as a teacher, she retired there. The town, she said, is her home.

“Every time I think about it, it just makes me cry,” she said. “If you can’t come home to your own house, what else can you do?”

Ferriday Police Chief Arthur Lewis was unavailable for immediate comment Tuesday.