GRANDMOTHER ENTERS PLEA

Mary Ruth Blanco, a West Covina grandmother accused of trying to rob a gas station in a vain attempt to pay the family’s taxes, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to second-degree robbery charges by reason of temporary insanity as her attorney told the court she was “driven insane by the IRS.”

The 71-year-old woman faces a minimum of four years in state prison if convicted because of the special circumstance arising from the alleged use of a handgun in the botched May 4 robbery.

Blanco remains free on $5,000 bail and her attorney, Jack Alex, called on Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti not to seek prison time.

“I’m hopeful that he will have some sort of compassion,” said Alex, a former judge.

Blanco is accused of trying to hold up a gas station. The attendant, safe behind bulletproof glass, ignored the robber and noted the license plate of the woman who left empty-handed. Blanco said news of a threatened garnishment of her husband’s pension by the IRS and an imminent foreclosure on their home for unpaid property taxes drove her to desperation.

“Well, I hope they will not send me to jail, Blanco said outside the courthouse. “I wouldn’t live in there. I’d die.”