Bodega Clerk Beats Robbers With Their Own Gun in Deli Heist Fail | New York Post

Two thugs lose their grip on a deli heist as one clerk wrestles a gun out of his attackers hands and proceeds to beat him with it.

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From 'Qns. bodega worker fights back against thugs (video)'

A hero bodega worker turned the tables on a pair of thugs in Queens — wrestling a gun from one of them during a stickup and then holding the creep till cops arrived.

“I’m not going to fight to fail — I fight to win,” deli-counter worker Danny Caba, 32, told The Post, proudly sporting the seven stitches he received when one of the robbers bashed him in the head with a bottle trying to get him to release his accomplice.

Caba said the sneak bottle attack only made him more stubborn.

“When I got hit, that made me more strong,” he said. “I didn’t want to die. No one wants to die… I was a little scared, but I had to keep going.”

The terrifying showdown occurred around 7:15 a.m. Saturday inside the Lantigua deli at 30-74 14th St. in Astoria, cops said.

Caba said the two suspects had already been in the store a few minutes earlier to buy coffee and cigarettes — and to case the joint.

When they returned, one of them, Jose Cruz, 24, of Brooklyn was wearing a black mask and bullet-proof vest and carrying a .40-caliber Glock loaded with 12 rounds, cops said. His cohort had a black hood over his head.

A third man was waiting outside in a getaway car.

Cruz and his buddy slipped in the back entrance and sprang the stickup as Caba and manager Louis Colon were behind the counter, cops and witnesses said.

As Cruz’s cohort ordered another female employee and a customer to the ground in the back of the store, the masked man hissed to the two male workers, “This is a holdup!” and whipped out what looked like a “war firearm,” Caba said.

“I was a little bit scared, but I wasn’t thinking at the moment,” the worker said.

Caba said he made a grab for the gun, and the pair struggled. A shot went off and hit the wall.

Colon jumped in to help, and Cruz’s accomplice then ran to the front and bashed Caba over the head with a bottle, the men and cops said.

But by this time, a neighbor who had heard the commotion rushed over to try to aid the deli workers, and Cruz’s accomplice then fled, witnesses and police said.

As the deli workers were holding Cruz for the cops, the perp whined, “Please don’t kill me! I have family!” Caba said.

“I’m not a hero,” insisted Caba, a former construction worker in his native Dominican Republic who has been in the States for three and a half years.

“I was just trying to control the situation… At the moment, I wasn’t thinking. I just did what I had to do… Thank God it turned out well.”

Cruz is being held on $75,000 bail for charges including attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon, cops said.

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