Congressional Candidate Robbed at Gunpoint in North Miami

Don't politicians normally steal from us? We're doin' it wrong.

Congressional candidate and advocate Marleine Bastien was robbed at gunpoint while waiting to make a campaign appearance after mass at a church in North Miami on Saturday.

Another car pulled up alongside Bastien's as she waited in her car with her sister outside the Church of the Living God.

A man got out, opened Bastien's door, put a gun to her head, and demanded the pair's belongings. She says he threatened to blow her brains out if she didn't comply.

"At first he looked a little startled when he realized who I was," she said. "I don't know if he found out who I was but he looked, you know, taken a back and then he paused and said, 'give me your purse or I'll blow your f'ing brain out."

Bastien and her sister did as told, handing over purses and cell phones. Authorities say the man, whom they suspect of having robbed a woman walking down a sidewalk 30 minutes earlier, then escaped in his own vehicle.

"You have to be so hopeless and desperate," Bastien said. "I mean to come in front of a church, you have to be so hopeless and desperate."

The 51-year-old is running in a Democratic primary next week for an open House seat in a South Florida district. She is one of four Haitian-born candidates.

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