Shocking video captured a jiu-jitsu professor in Chicago taking down an alleged thief at a 7-Eleven.
The incident occured last Thursday night when Idriz Redzovic went to 7-Eleven and noticed a man harassing people outside.
“He comes up to me and says, ‘what are you looking at?,’” said Redzovic, who has 22 years of training, and is a third-degree Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt. “In my training I tell people to take a step back, hands up, don’t engage unless you feel safe.”
He continued watching the man, who eventually went inside the store and then punched a 19-year-old employee. That’s when Redzovic dealt with the situation.
“Once I saw him actually connect and hit the employee in his head, I jumped in, grabbed him like I do in training here, put him down, flattened him like a pancake and then I tied him up like a pretzel in a position called ‘Gift Wrap’ or ‘Twisting Arm Control,’” he said.
The jiu-jitsu expert live-streamed himself while keeping the man on the ground until Chicago police arrived.
“Come on man,” the alleged thief can be heard on video.
“No, I’m not letting you go, you were harassing those girls and then you swung at that 7-Eleven employee,” said Redzovic.
When police arrived, they arrested 30-year-old Christopher Cruz with two misdemeanor counts of retail theft and battery.
This isn’t the first time Redzovic thwarted thieves in his neighborhood. In 2020, he stopped an alleged thief rummaging through his car outside of his martial arts studio.
Instead of pressing charges, however, he decided to use the incident as a teaching moment.
“I wanted to show people that not every situation calls for a punch and a strike,” Redzovic said at the time. “By learning the gentle art of jiu-jitsu you can control somebody and pin somebody and twist them up like a pretzel and not have to damage them.
“If I had to, I could have escalated the situation even more and applied some damage, but sometimes you gotta be compassionate,” he continued. “Sometimes being nice to people, and showing them the world is nice, it might open their eyes to change. It’s not always violence.”
