Cooley student foils coffeeshop robbery

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - An armed robber was no match for Shady Yassin when a coffee shop near GVSU's downtown campus was targeted.

About 1:15 a.m. Thursday, the Bitter End Coffee House on Fulton near Straight was filled with the usual crowd of students sipping java, doing homework and using their laptops.

A man, wearing a long coat, walked into the shop, pulled out a long gun from underneath his coat and ordered the customers to start stacking up their items -- wallets, laptops, anything the robber could fit into a bag.

"I guess he thought just he'd wave the rifle around and everyone would just drop it and comply," said Yassin, a  Cooley Law student. "I gave him a little run for his money."

Yassin was near the front door, right next to the suspect. "He came in. He just stood right over here. And he pulled the rifle right out of his pants," he told 24 Hour News 8. "He just kind of came right over here and he told us, he ordered us to give us the laptops."

He added, "So it's like this guy just cocked the rifle and for all we know, it's a live rifle."

Yassin saw an opportunity and decided to act. "I think given the situation, all the circumstances, that I was pretty confident that I could help the situation out. "

He had his chair out a bit, he said. The suspect "went to go make a move to grab the laptops and I kind of lunged at him out of the chair and grabbed the rifle like this and I took him and I kind of threw him up against this a couple of times and just yanked the rifle way from him.

"As soon as I grabbed it, he took off out of the door and ran away." At the time, no one, including Yassin, knew the gun was not loaded.

Some of Yassin's reaction had to do with concern with the dozens of other people in the coffee shop. Some of it had to do with the three years of law school notes in Yassin's computer.

"This guy's over here trying to get our laptops. I'm a law student so lot of our work's on our laptops, so I didn't really feel like parting ways with it. "

Whatever it was, his actions brought a quick end to the situation.

The suspect was eventually caught by police, and is expected to be arraigned Monday.

And Yassin is moving on with life. He's set to graduate from Cooley Law in the spring. He's currently just "getting to criminal defense. "

Shady Yassin may one day be defending the guy who tried to rip him off.

"Yeah, kind of ironic," he said. "Who knows? Maybe I'll jump to the other side instead and put guys like these off the streets."

The shop is located in the John Ball neighborhood association. Crime stats for the area , including robberies where a gun is used, are actually down from this time last year.