Don’t try this at home, unless you’re as well-versed in both hand-to-hand combat and weaponry as Staff Sgt. Eddie Peoples. Back home in Sarasota, Florida in 2012 to take care of an ailing relative, Peoples had the misfortune to be caught up in a bank robbery while on leave from the army.
The criminal, 34-year-old Matthew Rogers, was actually holding nothing but a toy gun, it turned out, but the army veteran had no way to know that, of course. And when Rogers threatened his family, things went from victim to dragon-slayer in the blink of an eye.
“He pointed the gun and he said . . . ‘Don’t anyone do anything, or else the kiddie will get it,’ or something to that effect,” Peoples said at a press conference where he was recognized for his action by the Sarasota sheriff’s office the following day.
Eddie managed to pin the robber’s car in, and then explained what happened next.
“When he put that gun in my face after I got out of the car, I did a wrist lock on him,” Peoples said, adding that he threw in some martial arts moves he’d mastered during five tours of duty in Iraq. “By that time, one of the deputies had already pulled up, which was bad for me,” Peoples added with a smile. “I’m holding a weapon in one hand and a bag of money in the other.”
Fortunately, deputies were able to sort out who the real perp was pretty quickly, and to recognize how lucky they were that someone of the staff sergeant’s skill level was the one to be taking down the bad guy.
“[It] was nothing like some of the attacks I’ve gone through,” Eddie said in the press conference, which aired on TV. “It was good. . . one guy, I think it was kind of unfair, he should have brought a partner,” Peoples added, showing he’s used to taking on entire troops when facing the enemy.
Most likely, authorities would not recommend that most people try this kind of thing in a similar situation. But just this once, it was nice to see the good guy win.
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