The other day, one of our feel good stories included one from a Waffle House in Fayetteville, North Carolina where a youngster tried to rob the restaurant with what was being described as an AK-47 rifle. CCO sends us a link to the latest on that story; it was 70-year-old Vietnam veteran Phillip Brooks who thwarted the robbery, according to WRAL;
Brooks said, however, that he immediately realized the AK-47 the would-be robber was brandishing wasn’t real.
“This thing was wood almost all the way up to the end of the barrel. No trigger guard, no trigger,” he said. “All the working parts were missing, so I just told the girls, ‘Don’t give him anything. That’s a fake gun.'”
“Well, I’m for real,” the robber said as he swung around and pointed the weapon at Brooks.
“I showed him how real I was,” Brooks said Friday with a chuckle. “I hit him in the nose with my cane.”
The two then engaged in a bizarre duel, using a cane and a phony firearm.
“He kept batting it away with the barrel of the rifle, and I kept batting the barrel of the rifle away,” Brooks said.
Other customers then jumped in and chased the robber out of the restaurant. Fayetteville police are still searching for him.
Mr Brooks says that he was in Vietnam so he got to see a lot of AK-47s – he knows what a real one looks like. Fayetteville is right outside the Fort Bragg main gate, so it’s probably a bad idea to use a fake gun to commit a crime there anyway.
Ah! The inimitable cane maneuver! Good on him!
Your phony AK is no match for my cane young Jedi.
Never bring a phony rifle to a cane fight! 4.0 job Mr. Brooks
The man remembered his bayonet training! I still think that if I ever need a cane and will likely before too long will get one with a .410 shotgun built in.
Did the robber drop the phoney weapon? Does Mr Brooks get to keep it as a “war trophy”?
Why would you rob something right outside of Ft. Bragg? Maybe he just wanted to give someone the opportunity for a Soldiers Medal
Real or fake, it is still Armed Robbery. Too bad he tangled with “Bat Masterson” Brooks.
Waffle House ought to buy Brooks a very good walking stick, one with a little heft on one end and a steel spine.