Man Being Hailed As Hero for Tackling an Armed Robber

[kellyhound]

August 08, 2008 - Tulsa
A man being hailed as a hero for stopping a suspect by tackling him during an armed robbery.

Craig Stutzman's jaw was nearly broken in the fight. But, he kept it up until police arrived. And, it was all caught on the store's surveillance tape.

One of the cameras caught the moment the robber -- identified by police as Tony Cleveland -- walked into the store.

It was at about 11:30 p.m. A moment later, he shoots at a customer.
What you can't see is the gun jamming, seconds before Stutzman made his move.

"So, I said if there's a chance to do something, you'd better take it now."

Craig is at home today with a swollen jaw, stitches and scrapes. He got those injuries in the battle to keep the robbery suspect from running away. The fight spilled into the parking lot.

"Why did you hang on? Why were you so insistent on hanging on to this guy?"
"I can't give you an answer," Stutzman says. "I've been thinking of that myself. I don't know."

In the parking lot, another bystander gets the gun. And a few seconds later, police arrive and cuff Cleveland.

"We don't want to put out there that we expect citizens to take action like that," says Sergeant Dave Walker. "But, absolutely, this gentleman taking action like that led to the arrest and clearance of this case and put a real bad guy behind bars."

Bad guy indeed. Cleveland has previous convictions for armed robberies.

Back to Craig.

"It was just reaction really," he says. "I'm not sure why, but it's just what happened."

Craig is not a security guard and he's never taken a karate class. He's a mild-mannered mechanic by day turned literal crime-fighter by night.

"You know, it's just one less, it's such a small percentage of people like that. One less. Percentage-wise that's got to be huge."

Robbery detectives are now taking a look at previous unsolved robberies at Food Pyramid stores in Tulsa to determine if Cleveland had any hand in those.

[byla]

fkn cowards why the hell they didnt help him from the beginning?

[güttsfükk]

i keep misreading his name as stuntman

[indybob]

Very cool there needs to be more of this. You know you see the vids of the people getting their hands cut because they robbed someone and you think WOW that's overdoing it. Then you see shit like this and that is not enough.

[32oz]

I love how thugs like this think a gun makes them tough, while in reality they're still weak little pussies that happen to have a gun.