Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the victim of a purse snatching late Thursday in Northwest Washington near the Watergate apartment complex, where she lives.
She had been walking home from the Kennedy Center with her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, and daughter Jane, according to sources familiar with the incident.The thief was a man of undetermined age who wore a white satin jacket, police said. He ran by and grabbed the purse from Ginsburg's hand.
The leather purse contained $40 in cash, police said. Police would not say what else was in the purse, but it likely contained Ginsburg's government credit card and court identification, according to a source familiar with the incident.
People close to Ginsburg who related the incident added that by the time the justice contacted credit-card companies to report the theft, the thief or someone else already had used her cards.
Police said no one was injured, but those close to Ginsburg said she was quite shaken up. Ginsburg would not comment.
District of Columbia police said that no arrest had been made and that the purse had not been found.
Ginsburg, 63, is a slight woman. She is a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and served on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for 13 years. In 1993, President Clinton made her his first appointment to the nation's high court.
"It's a purse snatching that occurred to a famous person," a police official said. Such events, he said, "definitely happen."
Last year, Teresa Heinz, heir to the family fortune of H.J. Heinz Co. and wife of Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Wren Wirth, who is married to Undersecretary of State Timothy E. Wirth, were robbed at gunpoint in downtown Washington. Neither woman was hurt.