Uncle Sam Saves Student from Muggers

ABC’s Stu Schutzman from New York:

All our worst nightmares came to fruition in a scant few terrifying moments the other night for one young man. 

He’s a 21-year-old student at a University.  It was after 1 a.m. Tuesday, he was walking home from his job as a campus shuttle driver, when the night turned very ugly.  The man was confronted by four thugs wearing hoods and stocking caps, brandishing guns.  They hustled him into an alley, threw him to the ground, one of the guns nestled in his neck — our worst nightmare. 

They lifted his wallet, his cell phone and his keys.  The wallet produced only $16 in cash, the robbers weren’t amused.  That’s when the night could have and should have turned even uglier for the victim — but it didn’t.

“Upon going through my wallet,” he told a local reporter, “they found my military ID which stopped them dead in their tracks.” 

The man joined the Army reserve last year.  “We can’t do this,” he quotes the ringleader, “we gotta give him his stuff back.” 

The gang had already terrorized three or four others that night — they even mugged a Rabbi.  It’s not clear why the crime victim's military service so mitigated his own situation — but it sure did.  The muggers returned his stuff, fist-bumped and thanked him. 

“It was a complete 180,” he told the New York Times, “I consider myself very lucky but also bewildered.” 

So are the Milwaukee police.  “Sometimes you hear about a criminal who, for one reason or another decides not to prey on a victim,” say the police to the Times, “but I’ve not heard of this particular twist.”

A particular twist of fate for the victim, who can’t explain how glad he is to have survived his first encounter with street crime; though probably not his last….his major is criminal justice.