Restaurant Owner Tackles Purse Thief On Upper West Side: Report

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A quick-thinking server and a brazen restaurant owner teamed up to stop a purse snatching on the Upper West Side, according to a report.

Dan Kirsh, the owner of Kirsh Bakery and Kitchen, took down a thief on Sunday, July 9 reuniting a woman with her lost belongings and helping police catch a criminal, the West Side Rag first reported.

The thief entered Kirsh Bakery and Kitchen — located on Amsterdam Avenue near West 87th Street — on Sunday morning carrying a large purse and asked a server to use the restaurant's bathroom, the West Side Rag reported. When the man was seen leaving the restaurant without the bag, the server checked the bathroom and saw that its contents had been emptied out by the man, according to the report.

The server then alerted Kirsh, who sprung into action and used some skills learned from his army days. When Kirsh confronted the suspected thief on the street the man attempted to attack Kirsh, but the Upper West Side business owner took the man down instead, the West Side Rag reported.

Police arrested the man around 10 a.m. and the contents of the purse were returned to a woman who ran to the scene after realizing her bag was missing, according to the report.

"We always hear things like ‘if you see something say something’ and our server did that, but on top of that our owner ‘did something’ when he saw something," Todd McMullen, a manager at the restaurant told the West Side Rag. "They both stepped up and did the right thing without any thought of their own safety."

Read the full West Side Rag story here.

Photo by Google Maps street view