A Chick-fil-A employee is being praised for stopping a man from carjacking a mom with her baby outside of a Florida restaurant. The woman was getting out of her car when a man approached her “wielding a stick and demanding her keys,” Florida authorities said. Thomas ‘Mykel’ Gordon is praised as ‘one incredible individual’ after fighting off assailant.
Hero Chick-fil-A Worker Stops Man From Carjacking Mother With Infant
By
Zainab Pervez in
News
On 18th September 2022
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An employee of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Florida is being praised as a hero after he fought off a man trying to steal a car from a woman getting her infant out of the vehicle in a harrowing parking lot confrontation captured on video.
The 26-year-old employee, Mykel Gordon, was working at a location in the Fort Walton Beach area Wednesday afternoon when the woman started screaming for help, Chick-fil-A and the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said in statements.
The woman told deputies that she was getting her nephew out of his car seat when the suspect, William Branch, approached her, an incident report stated. The woman said the man was carrying a stick and "wielding it in a way she believed he would use it as a weapon," according to the report.
The woman said she stepped back away from the man and he lunged at her, grabbed her keys from her waistband and got inside her car, according to the report.
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"When the victim began screaming for help an employee at Chick-fil-A ran to intervene," the sheriff's office wrote on Facebook. Cellphone video taken by a witness shows Gordon and the man wrestling on the ground before other people run over. Gordon then holds the man down.
The video shows one of the co-workers pull out a cellphone and appear to dial the police when another woman approached and yelled at him: “She had a baby in her hand! How dare you? How dare you scare her like that?
Sheriff’s deputies later arrived and jailed a man whom they identified as 43-year-old William Branch with one count each of battery and carjacking with a weapon. They said they also booked him with another carjacking attempt reported minutes earlier.
The sheriff's office is crediting the employee as a good Samaritan who stopped the suspect from fleeing.
"A major shout-out to this young man for his courage," the department said in the post.
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Matthew Sexton, the operator of the Chick-fil-A branch, said he is relieved everyone is safe.
"I'm grateful for my amazing Team Member, Mykel Gordon, who so selflessly jumped in to intervene and help our Guests. I couldn't be prouder of his incredible act of care," Sexton said
Okaloosa’s sheriff, Eric Aden, on Thursday went to Gordon’s Chick-fil-A and presented him with a framed certificate of service and a ceremonial coin that some organizations use to recognize special achievements.
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This isn't the first time he has lent a helping hand to a customer. In 2018, he helped two teenage girls after a truck failed to negotiate a turn and fell onto the girls' car.
That girl told him her friend was in the car still alive. Gordon saw the other girl struggling to crawl out of a small opening on the passenger side. He realized he couldn’t reach her, but he ran inside to grab ice and towels.
Eventually, a group of other passersby – including a former firefighter – forced open one of the destroyed car’s doors, and the second girl was able to wiggle free.
"God resonates there. It’s a miracle in many ways how this happened. But just to have people like this that step forward and make something happen, I know not everybody is gonna do something like that," said the father of one of the girls.