BOOM. Feel the fist of justice. In Chicago, a restaurant owner used his martial arts skills to knock out a thief who stole a customer's iPhone: Restaurant Owner Serves Knuckle Sandwich To Alleged iPhone Thief.Restauranteur Jason Chan owns the Lincoln Park sushi joint Juno. He also happens to be a practitioner of the martial art Shidokan, a style of karate. But more on that in a bit.
Chan was suspicious of 37-year-old Justin Ballog when he entered the restaurant and placed his jacket on the bar. When Ballog suddenly snatched his coat back and ran out of the restaurant, a customer realized the man had grabbed his iPhone.
Oh helll no. Chan immediately took off in search of the thief, and remembering his distinct striped sweater, tracked him to a restaurant a few blocks down the street. That's where he confronted him, and that's where Chan's Shidokan skills came in handy when Ballog tried to get physical.
He knocked him him out with a kick to the face:
He saw him walk into Lou Malnati's Pizzeria at Wrightwood and Lincoln.Ballog was charged with misdemeanor theft. He messed with the wrong restaurateur -- a guy who's been training in martial arts for 19 years. Gary Wolske, the guy whose iPhone almost got stolen, sent Chan a bottle of 12-year-old, single-malt scotch as a thanks for the theft-thwarting asskicking. Well-deserved.
Chan pulled up in front of the pizzeria and confronted him as he tried to repeat his jacket ploy at the bar.
"We engaged with each other, and he tried to push me out of the way and run out," Chan said. "I grabbed him and threw him into the door."
While people watching the incident called police, Chan, who teaches a type of martial art called Shidokan, fought the man on the sidewalk.
"He was adversarial, [so I used] hand-to-hand combat techniques to make sure he was unconscious," Chan said.
"I put him in a maneuver called an arm bar and told him I would break his arm if he tried to get away," Chan said. The man kept fighting, so Chan knocked him out with a kick to the face and neutralized him until the police arrived a few minutes later.
More here: Restaurateur tracks down, knocks out iPhone theft suspect