An armed robber had just no idea what was in store for him when an older gentleman unhesitatingly stood up and walked over to confront him; as the suspect left passengers fearfully remaining in their seats while handing over their possessions, on a train in Chicago.
At 5:50 in the morning, Jean-Paul LaPierre who was headed to run at the Chicago Marathon was on a Chicago CTA Blue Line train with a large number of passengers. When he notices that many of the passengers appeared to be heading in the wrong direction on the train, he then asked a bystander what was going on. An alleged burglar was going through the train and taking people’s money by displaying his handgun.
LaPierre then chose not to remain silent or leave the situation like the other passengers and made the decision that he would not tolerate such injustice. As when the armed robber was pointed out to him but instead, but rage welled up within the 52-year-old Boston native.
After people rushed out the doors at the Cumberland train stop, the fearless Bostonian summoned his fighting skills to incredibly disarm the robber.
LaPierre walked right up to the armed man, confronting the robber; he headed straight to the area of the train in which Anderson was standing, and demanded that he hand over the gun. “He was very quietly robbing people. I went up front and said to him, give me the gun and we started fighting for the gun,” he explained.
Despite being much taller and larger than LaPierre, Anderson seemed to fear his confronter, eventually complying with his orders. As video captured the moment LaPierre tussled with the robber and held him against his will by the train doors. He managed to pull the gun from the alleged robber’s hand in the process as the suspect yelled at him to let go.
“I’m a boxer. I’ll break your head in one punch. I could hit you 7 times in 3 seconds, black belt in karate. I have no problem breaking your neck — no problem breaking your neck,” LaPierre can be heard telling Anderson.
LaPierre urged a bystander to take the gun and secure the safety because he needed to use his other hand to fend off the robber. Then, until the cops arrived, he had to keep Anderson in place.
LaPierre said, “The man in front of me said he could put the safety on, so I handed him the gun and he put the safety on and walked it out of the train. At this point, I was alone on the train with this guy and I had no more weapon. I kept telling him if you move I’m going to knock you out. I’m going to hit you seven times in three seconds.”
A back-and-forth conversation between him and Anderson revealed why he stepped in even while the suspect’s accomplices were shouting threats at him to let go of their friend. While everyone else on the train simply watched, as LaPierre refused to allow innocent people to be bullied.
“They started threatening me but I just stood in his face. The guy kept saying to me, ‘It’s just a gun, let me go, let me go.’ I kept telling him, ‘you’re not going anywhere,’” he explained.
Watch the video below for more details:
Sources: Taphaps, Chicago Sun-Times, Blue Lives Matter