Yagiz Dogan, 21, thought buying jewelry was his specialty. In Brickell, Miami, he approached Yuriko Torres pretending to be interested in two bracelets worth thousands of dollars.
She showed them to him, confidently. He took off running with the bracelets in his hand as if it were part of the deal. What he did not anticipate was that a passerby would take the theft personally. The stranger went after him, caught up with him, and knocked him down.
Dogan, in a last attempt to escape, sprayed pepper spray directly in his face. The man did not even flinch: he kept him pinned to the ground, his eyes burning, until the police arrived.
The stolen bracelets were found inside Dogan’s bag. And it was not his first attempt: police were already investigating him for scamming another woman out of a 15,000-dollar diamond ring the previous month.
Torres did not hesitate to call her rescuer a “hero”, although so far no one really knows who this citizen is who decided that Thursday that he was not going to let a theft like that slide.