{"id":78765,"date":"2025-12-23T03:02:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78765\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T03:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T03:02:05","slug":"quick-thinking-nyc-deacon-foils-knife-wielding-thief-at-sunday-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/78765\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick-thinking NYC deacon foils knife-wielding thief at Sunday mass"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A would-be thief interrupted Sunday mass at a <a href=\"https:\/\/dioceseofbrooklyn.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Queens Catholic church <\/a>to demand cash at knifepoint but a quick-thinking deacon just wasn\u2019t having it, cops said.<\/p>\n<p>The thief knocked on the door of <a href=\"https:\/\/saintsmaryandgertrude.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">St. Mary Star of the Sea and St Gertrude Catholic Church<\/a> as the Beach 38th St. house of worship located near Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway was scheduled to begin its 9:30 a.m. mass, police said.<\/p>\n<p>A deacon answered the door to find the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/assets\/nypd\/downloads\/pdf\/crime_statistics\/cs-en-us-city.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> crook knife in hand,<\/a> demanding cash.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of handing over his money, the deacon <a href=\"https:\/\/abc7ny.com\/post\/exclusive-video-bronx-deli-robbery-caught-on-camera-nyc-crime\/13782669\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">acted fast to protect himself and the flock<\/a>, slamming the door shut and calling 911, cops said.<\/p>\n<p>Police arrested Miguel Bonano, 64, at the scene less than 20 minutes later.<\/p>\n<p>During the arrest, <a href=\"https:\/\/ucr.fbi.gov\/crime-in-the-u.s\/2019\/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019\/topic-pages\/robbery\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">police recovered a knife from Bonano\u2019s jacket pocket<\/a>, which the victim identified as the stickup weapon.<\/p>\n<p>Bonano later told investigators, \u201cI took out a knife and I tried to rob the guy,\u201d court documents show.<\/p>\n<p>Bonano is charged with attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. He was held on $10,000 cash bail at his arraignment Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A would-be thief interrupted Sunday mass at a Queens Catholic church to demand cash at knifepoint but a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,11,10,12,261,265],"class_list":["post-78765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78765","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=78765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}