Meet Eric Haritakis, a Pinellas County, FL Mixed Martial Arts instructor who goes by the nickname “Ginja Ninja”. That’s him below…
Eric was waiting to deposit money for his health food delivery company (“Zen Body Foods”, may as well give him the unsolicited plug here) at the Largo branch of Grow Financial Federal Credit Union when one of the tellers yelled at another that she had just been robbed. Per Eric: “The teller was empty. She yelled to the other woman across the bank, ‘Hey, that guy just robbed me…’ and I just kind of ran out the door”.
Eric was captured on surveillance video from the neighboring UPS store chasing the bank robber. While the video doesn’t show what happened next, Eric explains it himself and, shortly thereafter the video shows Eric guiding the robber back to the front of the bank. Kristin Drexler, a UPS Store employee said: “I see the guy bringing a guy back with his hands behind his back and almost carrying him. I was just amazed at how down-to-Earth [Eric} was. He was just so nonchalant about the fact that he had just chased down a bank robber.”
Per Eric: “I don’t really know what I was thinking at that time. I just kind of went for it. I figured if he had a weapon, he probably would have pulled it out at that point… I asked the UPS people if they had zip ties. They didn’t have zip ties, but the place next door had duct tape”, so Eric “hog-tied” the robber and literally sat on him so that he would stay still until police arrived at the scene.
The arrested unarmed bank robber is a one Michael Jon Neubecker, aged 31, who is described by cops as being a “transient”, who has now been charged with one (1) count of unarmed robbery and who is is currently being held in the Pinellas County Jail.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualteri said that he was thankful that Eric helped stop a suspect from leaving the scene, but he was certain to warn the folks that even well-trained citizens should think twice before trying to stop a suspected criminal. “You can be trained all you want with your hands, but hands don’t stop bullets. If this guy had a gun as he’s robbing a bank, MMA or Hulk Hogan – it doesn’t really make a difference, you’re not going to stop a bullet.”
Eric, on the other hand, thinks that it’s a problem when people stand around and “don’t do anything”, stating that “people just let it happen when, if we all work together, it wouldn’t be happening in the first place. Everybody should be doing that.”
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