Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Suspect wrestles out of his weight class
The crook had a gun, but he didn’t have a chance.
He apparently didn’t know the guy he was trying to rob was former professional wrestler Shad Gaspard.
The 6-foot-5 Gaspard snatched the gun, slammed the bandit to the ground and pinned him until police arrived, according to a police report.
“[He] was like, ‘Yo, give me the gun back. Give me [it] right now,’ ” Gaspard told WSVN-Ch.7. “He wasn’t listening, so I grabbed him by the back of the neck and I ran to the door. When I ran to the door, I ran into the door hard ... trying to knock him out.”
The incident began shortly before midnight Saturday, when police say Jason Felix, 35, of North Lauderdale walked out of the bathroom at a Valero gas station at 4550 University Drive in Coral Springs. He approached Gaspard and asked if he would buy him a beer, police said.
Gaspard, 35, refused, and Felix — 5 feet 8 and 140 pounds — reached into his waistband for what appeared to be a semi-automatic handgun, police said.
“Are you trying to rob me?” the former World Wrestling Entertainment star asked.
Police say Gaspard lunged toward Felix and grabbed the weapon, later found to be an airpowered BB gun, and pulled Felix out to the front of the store. There he pinned Felix with the help of witnesses, the police report says.
Felix was jailed on a charge of robbery with a weapon and later released on a $10,000 bond.
Gaspard — a former bodyguard and actor in movies including “Get Hard” and “Think Like a Man Too” — was in town from New York to promote an event. He said he didn’t know the weapon was a BB gun. He just wanted to protect everyone, he said.
“I thought it was a real gun the entire time, and, honestly, I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” he told Pro Wrestling Sheet, a news website. “I just kept thinking about how I wanted to make sure I got home to my son.”