Mugger sticks gun in Japanese teenager’s back, she tells him to get a job

Woman would rather thief take life advice than other people’s money.

At about 10 p.m., a 19-year-old woman was waking through a parking lot in a residential area of Kobe’s Higashinada Ward. Before she could get home, though, a 29-year-old man snuck up on her from behind and slipped one arm under her armpit and behind her neck, putting her in a standing half-Nelson hold.

That’s already a pretty terrifying thing to be subjected to, but things got even worse when the teenager felt the barrel of a gun being pressed into the small of her back. “Give me money,” the man ordered, and while there would have been no shame in speedy compliance, the woman didn’t feel like handing over her wallet just because an armed assailant had gotten the drop on her.

Instead, she asked the man why he needed money, to which he responded “I don’t have any money because of the coronavirus.” But not every reason for a person’s behavior counts as a valid excuse, and so the woman responded with “How about if you earn some money by working?”

It’s a gutsy move to give someone unsolicited life advice when they’ve got a gun aimed at you at point-blank range, but the woman’s words apparently had enough weight to make the man reconsider his methods for obtaining financial means, as he then let go of her and ran off. His escape has turned out to be only temporary, however, as following the attempted robbery on May 26, this Thursday Hyogo Prefectural officers arrested the man following an investigation in which they were able to determine his identity through surveillance camera footage. The man has admitted to the charges, though it turns out that the gun he used was not a conventional firearm, but an air gun. The woman, meanwhile, joins this foreign-born convenience store clerk on the list of people in Japan who have foiled robberies through asking “Why?”

Source: Yahoo! Japan News/Kobe Shimbun Next via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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