get these nets
Veteran
07/08/25
Video shows Bridgeport pastor fight off armed carjacker while visiting Baltimore
His family and congregation are furious with him for fighting an armed carjacker and risking his life, a Bridgeport pastor said in an interview Tuesday.
"No one is proud of me and no one is calling me a hero, except my grandson," Bishop-Elect Kenneth Moales Jr. said of the teenager entering his junior year in high school. "He said, 'You're the man. You still got the dog in you, Grandpa."
The leader of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit was in Baltimore, Md., for a funeral on June 29 and had just parked his wife's Audi A6 outside a seafood restaurant, where he planned to meet two fellow clergymen for dinner, Moales, 53, said.
He told what happened next, much of which was captured by a surveillance camera outside the restaurant:
In pouring rain, a person approached the driver-side window as though he had an emergency. Moales cracked the window and the young male said his phone was broken and he needed help. Suddenly, the crook pulled a ski mask over his mouth and nose and pointed a handgun at Moales
The car was running and Moales said he thought about pulling away, but the robber tapped the window with the gun and said, "I will shoot you. Get out of the car."
Looking at the small-framed robber, Moales said he feared for his life, but also thought, "I can take this guy. I'm not a hero, but I began to think, 'I can't die like this. My wife and children at home, they'd be devastated. I can't die here.' "
A tree obstructs the video camera in this part of the confrontation, but Moales said he got out of the car and punched the robber in the jaw and the two started struggling for control of the gun, which Moales said he recognized as a Glock 9 mm. The carjacker pistol-whipped him, but Moales said he wrestled the weapon away and it dropped to the pavement.
The robber then ran for the sidewalk with Moales right behind.
"This generation, they're not really fighters; they're shooters," he said.
He said his ire and adrenaline were up.
"I'm in full pursuit at age 53 and 300 pounds, chasing some young kid in the rain," Moales said. "It's all adrenaline, fight or flight."
The video shows the former football player tackling the robber, slamming him to the sidewalk with his full weight and pinning him as the teen writhes and kicks. But Moales said he soon recognized how young and slight the robber was and said he felt "like I was wrestling my son or my grandson." He said he told the kid he was a church pastor and a father and he was not going to press charges, that he would let him go.
He thought his words would spark respect, Moales said, but the crook, who he later learned was only 16, continued to struggle, got up and ran for the car. The video shows Moales grabbing him around one ankle and pulling off a sneaker. The carjacker grabbed the sneaker, scooped up the gun and got into the Audi, which was sill running. The video shows Moales leaning over the hood on the passenger side.
He said to the robber, now in the driver's seat, "I told you I'm a pastor. I'm letting you leave. What are you doing?"
But the re-armed carjacker pointed the pistol at him as Moales tried the passenger-side door handle, and he said he relented and stepped back as the thief drove away. Baltimore police were at the scene in less than five minutes, and within two hours they had tracked the car and arrested the teen behind the wheel, who had two passengers with him at that point, Moales said.
He praised Baltimore police, who gave him transportation to a hospital, where Moales' daughter works as a registered nurse, and then put him up at a hotel in the city. Growing up in Bridgeport, Moales said he got to know cops playing football with the Police Athletic League.
"To this day, I have respect for police and what they do," he said. "All my coaches were police officers."
He said he was most discouraged by the young Black robber's lack of respect, even outright disdain, for a Black pastor, and called such incidents and attitudes a nationwide "epidemic."
"There's a level of hopelessness and lack of authority and this reckless behavior among our youth," Moales said.
The father of four and grandfather of three said his daughter, the registered nurse who met him at the hospital, was the most angry with him for risking his life.
"She said, 'Dad, are you crazy?'" Moales said. "But I'm from Bridgeport. There is no urban community more violent and intense than Bridgeport. If you survive Bridgeport, you can go into any urban community and protect yourself."
