#88-year-old liquor store owner who shot alleged thief no ‘little old lady’

Tough-talking, alleged shoplifter-shooting, 88-year-old Nashville liquor store owner May Boyce wants criminals to know “I’m fed up and I’m not taking it anymore.”

The octogenarian was back at work Saturday after being charged with aggravated assault for shooting a man she said was trying to steal whiskey.

“I did what I had to do, and I hope word gets out on the street that I’m fed up and I’m not taking it anymore,” she told The Post Saturday from her store, where supportive customers lined up. “You’ve got to stick up for yourself sometimes.”

Boyce said she’s been robbed a number of times in the past, especially over the past four years, and she’s often been scared.

Now out on $10,000 bond, said she finally had enough Tuesday night when two men came into her Murfreesboro Road Liquor and Wines store, menacing her and trying to steal some booze. She told police that one of the men headed to the back where the vodka was located and another approached her “in a manner that she knew” he was going to steal from her.

That’s when she grabbed her late mother Mary’s .38 Smith & Wesson snub nose revolver, unwrapped it from its cloth covering and placed it on the counter.

One of the men asked for brown liquor and the other, identified as Ramon Fisher, grabbed a couple of Crown Royal whiskey bottles. Boyce then confronted Fisher, who she said “lunged” at her.

Boyce, a widow who stands 5’3″ and weighs 115 pounds, said Fisher was going to push her down. He then ran for the exit, the bottles under his arm, she said.

“I did what I had to do,” she said. “After you’ve been played for a fool by people stealin’ from you for years, you get fed up. And don’t put me in the category of a little old lady. I know how to take care of myself.”

Nashville police did not return calls from The Post Sunday asking about whether or not Boyce overreacted by shooting Fisher, who is recovering from his injuries.

Boyce said she didn’t necessarily mean to hit Fisher, who was shot in the back.

“I never shot a gun before,” Boyce said, “but I guess it’s something that comes natural. I aimed at the floor to scare him.”

Fisher fell to the ground, yelling that he was shot. He crashed into a display case of wine bottles that broke open all over the floor.

A young friend of Boyce, Carson Burch, took to Facebook to defend her, saying she wears a wrist brace from an incident at the store two months ago when she was robbed and assaulted.

“She is a sweet old lady who minds her own business. She opens this liquor store up every single day by herself, and she closes it down every night by herself,” Burch wrote. “Now she’s charged with a crime for defending herself? Give me a break.”

Boyce said she volunteered to go to the police station with the cops when they arrived.

“I went down, got my mugshot taken, got out on bond and came right back to the store,” Boyce said. “I got some people to help me but it took us to 1 a.m. to clean up all the wine that spilled everywhere.”

Police said in an affidavit obtained by McClatchy News Service that they visited Fisher at Vanderbilt Hospital where he told them he had been high on cocaine and liquor at the time he entered Boyce’s store and intended to steal liquor. The next day Fisher amended his story to say he and his friend planned to pay for the liquor and were not stealing it.

Boyce works six days a week at the liquor store she’s owned since 1994.

“I’m a people person,” she said, “I like to work.”

She’s upset only that the cops confiscated her gun, and told her it might be two years before she can get it back.’

“I told ’em, s–t, I might be dead by then,” Boyce said. “But the law’s the law.”