Shocking video captures a jiu-jitsu lawyer fending off a thief who tries to steal his phone while he eats lunch at a Taco Bell in New York.
Kyle, 28, was enjoying a cheese quesadilla at the Taco Bell on Junction Blvd in Queens on a sunny Tuesday when the poacher tried to steal his phone.
Unbeknownst to the thief, the lawyer had a purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and managed to fend off the attack.
Security camera footage showed Kyle immediately grabbing the thief and pushing him to the ground when he tried to grab his phone.
“He wanted my phone. He came up behind me and asked me for money or something. I said no and then he came back and grabbed my phone,” Kyle said in a Reddit post.
Kyle, 28, was enjoying a cheese quesadilla at the Taco Bell on Junction Blvd in Queens when a thief tried to grab his phone with one hand and the other hand on the doorknob to make a quick getaway
“He took a screenshot of it, so I know exactly when it happened.”
Kyle was eating at a table next to the door when the assassin tried to grab the man’s phone with one hand and the other on the doorknob so he could escape as quickly as possible.
The 28-year-old held the attacker tightly and jumped from his chair while fighting him off.
He quickly put his arm around the thief, pushed him to the ground and grabbed his cell phone from the floor.
The attacker jumped from the ground as Kyle watched him leave the restaurant with bated breath, waiting to see if he would continue fighting.
“He said, ‘I’m good, I’m good.’ I figured he just wanted my phone and didn’t want to fight anymore, so I let him go,” Kyle said.
Kyle used his purple belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu to fend off the attack and put the thief in a headlock and pushed him to the ground
Kyle is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu purple belt attorney who began training in 2018
“The police never came, so if I had held him there, I probably would still be there.”
“I’m a purple belt, I started in January of 2018. What was probably going through my mind was, ‘Oh shit, I have to take this guy down,’ and then I realized I could have gotten stabbed.”
Crime statistics from the New York City Police Department show that the district where Taco Bell is located has seen an increase in robberies, aggravated assaults, and both petty and grand theft.
In the 115th Precinct, robberies increased by 42.2 percent, aggravated assaults by 30.2 percent, grand larceny by 6.7 percent and petty larceny by 10.8 percent.