A man has been hailed a hero after wrestling what he believed to be a gun off a would be robber in a Spalding store.
Sedad Amin was working at Nasza Biendronka on the corner of Sheep Market and The Crescent at around 1.15pm on Thursday, September 27, when a man threatened him with what turned out to be an imitation firearm and demanded money and cigarettes.
The 23-year-old wrestled with the man ending up on the street before he disarmed him.
“He came up to me and said if ‘you don’t give me any money and cigarettes I will shoot you’,” Sedad said.
“He cocked the gun and it looked like it had a magazine, so I thought it was real.
“I don’t know why I reacted like I did. I just pushed him out the door and took the gun off him.
“He was very violent. He tried to break my finger and smash my face.
“I’m still alive though. That’s the main thing.
“Afterwards I deliberately held the gun with the barrel so my prints didn’t get in the way of the person who carried it out.”
Sedad told The Voice he and his family fled the Syrian Civil War eight years ago when he was 15.
But the incident has shook him so much he’s considering moving away from Spalding having previously lived in Sheffield and Weymouth.
“Eight years I’ve been in this country and I’ve never seen anything like that.
“It’s scared me. Why would someone want to kill me?
“Every time someone comes through the door I’m scared it’s someone who knows the person who did it.”
Gemma Holloway was working in the Airbrushed Aesthetics store next door and alerted the police to the incident.
She said: “I was sat doing someone’s nails and looked up and saw men fighting and then thought ‘that’s a gun’ one of them had.
“There was a baby at the front window of the shop so we moved that into the back then rang the police.
“It looked like one of the men was an absolute hero and held the man with the gun down after taking it off him.
“Afterwards the person who had the gun didn’t run away from the police. He just wanted the gun back and kept asking for it.”
A spokesman for South Holland Police said: “Following an incident in Sheep Market, Spalding, yesterday. Vaidotas Mecislauskas, aged 49, of Spalding Common, Spalding, has been charged with attempt robbery, criminal damage and possession of an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence.”
