Texas Woman, 76, Fights Off Cairo Crowd With Knife, Tea Kettle

Feb. 4, 2011— -- A 76-year-old Texas woman living in the heart of Egypt's political chaos said she wielded a knife and a boiling tea kettle this week to fight off a crowd that had entered her home.

"I had a knife, a nice sharp knife so I would make jabbing motions to them and there were times ... that I would make unladylike comments," Mary Thornberry said in a phone interview on ABC News' "Nightline" Thursday."

A friend of mine on the phone suggested that I boil a kettle of hot water and so, every so often, I would threaten with a kettle of hot water. ... I also had my walking cane and my rolling pin, OK ... so I tell everyone that's my armory."

Thornberry said the force of the crowd involved in the pro- and anti-President Hosni Mubarak demonstrations down her street seemed to burst into her building's foyer.

"A lot of these hoodlums got to my floor and stayed the night there," she said. "They tried to get to my apartment where I live. They made a lot noise, voices, and pounding on my door and incessant jabbing their fingers on the doorbell."

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Thornberry, who used to live in Forth Worth, Texas, moved to Cairo in 1996. She received her graduate degree in Egyptian history.