I love stories like this. While in town for the World Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi Championship in Long Beach, two grapplers from Oregon stopped a robbery at their hotel:
Alvarez, who owns a mixed martial arts studio in Eugene, Ore., and Denney, one of his students, were getting off the elevator just before midnight Sunday when they stumbled on the suspect forcing the motel clerk at gunpoint to empty the cash drawer.
The clerk yelled, “Gun! He robbed me!” Alvarez said he saw a flash of the weapon before the suspect plunged it into his bag with the money.
A former hip-hop club bouncer, Alvarez said that 10 years of training in self-defense and defusing conflict kicked in. The suspect didn’t seem to want to hurt them, either, Alvarez said, but kept insisting he did it for his daughter.
The man begged to be released so he could kiss the daughter one last time.
“He wasn’t trying to punch us; he just seemed like someone who had run out of options,” Alvarez said Friday evening. “I think back now and wonder what the hell was I doing? I should of hit him and knocked him out.”
Alvarez said he eventually got the suspect in a body lock and chokehold, and the clerk called the police.
Police arrested Luis Rosales, 31, at the scene. Authorities said a loaded 9-millimeter handgun and the money from the cash register were found inside Rosales’ backpack.
The video’s really not that exciting: