Moments later, Betancourt, who turned 52 in recent days, spotted a man in his mid-50s, someone he presumed to be the owner of a nearby store where the alleged robbery took place, running after the suspect. He caught up to him and a scuffle ensued, all of which Betancourt witnessed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs they wrestled, I looked around and nobody was helping. Nobody jumped in \u2014 including me,\u201d Betancourt writes, adding that he pondered the worst possible outcomes were he to get involved. \u201cIn a flash, during the standing wrestling match, the robber got a hold of one of the store owner\u2019s legs, lifted it up, effectively whiplashing the owner from a standing position, to slamming his head into the concrete. That THUMP is an unforgettable sound. The whole block, which had been watching, gasped, said \u2018Oh fuck\u2019 or screamed. The shop owner\u2019s body went limp, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his arms flopped out to his sides like he was crucified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Betancourt assumed the store owner was dead based on body language. He made a split-second decision to take action. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go back to the scene and see them pulling a sheet over the guy or running caution tape around him and think I could\u2019ve done something in that moment,\u201d he said. So when the suspect took off running, Betancourt \u201cgave chase\u201d by kicking it into high gear.<\/p>\n
He laid out the extensive and tense scene in detail, and he sprinted after the man across several New York City blocks. \u201cGod cursed me with little alligator legs, but in a cruel twist of fate and irony, he made those hairy little fuckers fast as lightning,\u201d wrote Betancourt.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
At one point, he caught up to him and screamed, \u201cGet on the ground now!\u201d The serious direction gave the man pause and he did slow down long enough for the men to exchange words. The suspect also seemed sure that the man was fatally injured, as he told Betancourt that his actions were in self-defense. Betancourt, who is sober and in recovery for more than two decades, tried to reason with the man as he believed he might be in the throes of addiction.<\/p>\n
Their exchange was brief as the man wouldn\u2019t give up and he got away again. But Betancourt wouldn\u2019t give up. He sprinted after him again, and when he lost his whereabouts momentarily, he sought the help of two elderly women who weren\u2019t overly helpful in pointing out the right direction. In a twist of fate, Betancourt then ran past Housing Authority police officers who assisted in the effort and eventually called for backup from the New York Police Department.<\/p>\n
Betancourt recalled that four NYPD cars arrived on scene, one carrying the store owner, who was alive, alert and came to identify the alleged thief while pressing a bag of ice on his head. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it. I really thought he was dead,\u201d wrote Betancourt, who was able to then give an official statement and eventually reunite with his wife, who was still outside the hotel. \u201cWhen I got back to the hotel, a woman who worked there, who saw the whole thing begin, called me a hero. No, I thought, I was a coward who decided to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hollywood Reporter verified the incident with the NYPD. A spokesperson in the office of the deputy commissioner for public Information confirmed that 35-year-old Iysa Muhammad was arrested and charged with third-degree robbery and second-degree assault after allegedly stealing two bottles of liquor from a store on Grand Street. The 37-year-old man, who was injured in the alleged assault, was transported to NYC Health and Hospitals\/Bellevue in stable condition. The investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n
As for Betancourt, his legs were gassed and it took a few hours to decompress, but he\u2019s now back home and back at work on the upcoming season five of Reacher as a writer and executive producer. He worked on season four, which is expected to debut sometime in 2026. He also worked on the Amazon Prime Video spin-off series, Neagley, focused on Frances Neagley, played by Maria Sten. Betancourt\u2019s other credits include The Purge, Shots Fired, Wicked City, Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire, Ironside, Necessary Roughness, The Mob Doctor, Detroit 1-8-7 and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.<\/p>\n
When he\u2019s back on set, he\u2019ll have something to talk to Ritchson about after the in-demand star recently had his own wild real-life encounter near his Tennessee home that also looked like it could\u2019ve been ripped from one of his episodes. <\/a><\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mick Betancourt, a veteran writer, producer and showrunner with a long list of credits on crime dramas and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80736,73837,80705,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-204123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-alan-ritchson-starrer-reacher","9":"tag-hollywood-reporter","10":"tag-mick-betancourt","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}