LOS ANGELES (KTLA) – The owner of a restaurant in Los Angeles is being hailed a hero after security footage captured him chasing down a robber and restraining him until help arrived.
Video of the incident, which has since been shared to Reddit, YouTube and Instagram, shows the attacker sucker-punch an elderly diner at Raffallo's Pizza in Hollywood and then steal from the victim's pockets.
"He hit the elderly gentleman right in the face, knocked him over. He took his cell phone, he took his wallet, and then he started running away," said Tim Ratcliff, the owner of the neighboring Hollywood Shin restaurant.
Video shows Ratcliff, who was sitting nearby, immediately begin to pursue the assailant. He tackles the young man as the victim's belongings fly into the street.
"He ruined my glasses. They're destroyed," said Ratcliff, who took a punch to the head while subduing the attacker.
Ratcliff added that he used some "judo moves" to pin the thief while two women helped gather the victim's belongings and those belonging to Ratcliff, whose cash spilled out while restraining the man.
"He was actually trying to bite me a whole bunch of times," Ratcliff said of the man.
One of the women who assisted Ratcliff began kicking the thief, the video shows, after Ratcliff said he warned the assailant to stop biting him. She also went to work aggressively restraining the thief's loose legs by standing on them.
Ratcliff held the man down for about 10 minutes until police arrived.
The suspect, 28-year-old Michael Austin Dona, was arrested and charged with felony robbery.
The victim, said to be in his 70s, was taken to a hospital. He has since recovered from the incident.
Ratcliff, meanwhile, said he would intervene again if the opportunity arose.
"I would do it again," he said. "I'm tired of things happening that shouldn't happen, and the easiest thing I can say is there's more of us than there are of them. If we team up, then it's going to be fine."
0 Comments