A superhero safety guard fought off a pair of masked punks attempting to rob a hip SoHo boutique Monday — with the wild scuffle caught on dramatic surveillance video.
Tyrell Gibbs, 34, instructed The Publish he was working the door on the fashionable luxurious resale store Rebelonging for fewer than than two weeks when the brazen crime unfolded — and led him to faucet into his boyhood expertise as a decent finish and receiver on the soccer discipline to close down the unlawful rush.
“You meet them on the line of scrimmage,” mentioned Gibbs, who has an eight-year resume in safety and resort service — and the physique and face to land him modeling jobs, too.
“That’s what we had been doing — I felt like if I met them at that time and addressed them there, that he would go away versus me permitting them to come back to me,” Gibbs mentioned of the battle on the Manhattan retailer’s entrance.
“I simply know that in sports activities, both you step up, otherwise you step down.
“My factor was to react,” mentioned Gibbs, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Harlem taking part in for the Harlem Knights youth soccer league.
“It wasn’t to even struggle,” mentioned the guard — whose employer hailed him as “wonderful.”
“I didn’t need to hurt them, and I didn’t need to hurt anyone else, however protecting each physique protected, simply making a boundary between myself, the door and the open area of the door.”
The violent encounter unfolded shortly earlier than 3 p.m. on the West Broadway store, when a lady carrying a head scarf and darkish sun shades entered the shop, and the guard held the entrance door for her, in line with footage posted by the boutique on Instagram.
Then all hell broke unfastened.
Two masked punks tried to bum-rush the door, however Gibbs would don’t have any a part of it — with footage exhibiting him rebuffing them like an NFL lineman, shoving them away until they gave up and high-tailed it down the road.
Gibbs famous that in center college, he suited up with the Knights and later performed basketball — which he mentioned “completely” helped put together him for the face-off with the wannabe crooks.
“I’m simply attempting to maintain that door closed,” he mentioned. “It was hectic.”
The lady who entered earlier then scooted previous the guard and ran off.
The crew “fled on West Broadway down in direction of Canal St round 2:52-2:57PM in a white Acura. (We’re searching for their license plate and any info linked),” the shop mentioned in Instagram.
“We have now solely been open for every week and that is extraordinarily irritating however we have to resolve this to stop this from taking place to different companies,” the store mentioned.
“Thanks to our wonderful safety for protecting us protected we’re actually so grateful.”
Gibbs lamented the uptick in crime within the metropolis latest years.
“Petty larceny, automobile robberies. A few issues, like fraud and all forms of stuff like that. Petty crimes, however all about cash,” he mentioned.
“I really feel prefer it’s an economy-based factor. It’s been an actual powerful go for lots of people coming off the pandemic, so I can solely think about what’s actually occurring within the family. Numerous these folks I’m encountering throughout these conditions are very younger.
“Some folks haven’t aged out of the scenario that they’re in.”
Extra reporting by Invoice Farrington
