A man swooped in to help a teenager who was being attacked at the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, California, on Sunday.
When a massive fight erupted among young people at the mall, teenager Antonio Muñoz, who was there to see a movie with his brother, got caught in the middle, Fox 11 reported Monday.
Video footage shows the teenagers fighting outside the mall, and a single gunshot was reportedly fired during the incident. However, no one was injured.
Several law enforcement agencies from nearby were called to the scene to quell the fighting. Fox 11 noted it remained unclear why the fight occurred, adding no arrests were made:
While Muñoz was being punched and kicked, a man named Maurice Hardy saw what was happening and decided to take swift action.
He rescued the young man and told the mob to stand back. Fox 11’s video of the tense moments highlight Hardy as he runs toward the chaos, shoving those in the mob away from the young man who is laying on the ground.
“It’s sickening to me that they were doing that because it’s like, where’s your home training? What is your parents teaching you at home? Why do you feel like that’s okay?” Hardy recalled.
When the co-owner of Gracie University of Jiu Jitsu in Torrance heard about what happened, he gave a year’s membership for classes to Muñoz and Hardy, NBC Los Angeles reported Wednesday.
“To see that Maurice had that level of courage and that level of service in his heart and in his DNA, all I thought to myself was, if we can give him Jujitsu, it can be an even more, even greater force for good,” stated Rener Gracie.
Although he is bruised, Muñoz is grateful for his rescuer’s actions. He told the outlet, “I wanna do what Maurice is doing, I want to protect people who are getting hurt.”
Hardy told Fox he believes anyone else would have done the same thing to rescue a victim.
“I’m just looking out for him as I would want somebody to look after my two little brothers,” he explained.