A New York City doorman is being hailed as a hero after he stepped up to help a young woman who was chased down by two robbers and pushed against a wall over the weekend in a brazen, broad daylight attack.
A 24-year-old woman was robbed of her phone by two thieves outside an Upper East Side building at around 3:45 p.m. Sunday, police said.
The victim was not harmed, and the brutes were unable to snatch her purse as well since the doorman of a building at 74th Street and Madison Avenue intervened, ABC7 reported.
“I did what I could, and I wish I could have done more, but it just happened so fast that I couldn’t,” the doorman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the station.
The pair chased after the woman and pinned her against the glass of the building lobby where the doorman was posted.
“I heard like a thump. She hit the glass with her face. And when I looked up our eyes kind of met and all she said, ‘Help,’” he said.
He ran outside to see what was happening but the quick-thinking brutes tried to confuse him. The one who had the victim pinned called out that she had stolen his phone, he told ABC7.
“So, I stepped back because now I thought, I am aiding the thief? But that was enough for them. That little distraction,” the doorman said.
The pair then snatched the woman’s phone and took off laughing as they ran away.
The doorman said he was shocked they had no shame.
“What struck me is that they were so bold,” he said. “Even when I was outside, they still continued to rob her.”
Residents of the building applauded their doorman, calling him a hero for intervening, the station reported.