A California pastor reportedly used his martial arts skills to thwart a would-be burglar at his Antioch church on Thanksgiving Day.
Nick Neves, who has served First Family Church for 20 years, received an alert just after midnight about a break-in and rushed to confront the intruder, according to KGO-TV.
USA
An MMA trained pastor fought off a degenerate leftist who attacked his church with an AXE on thanksgiving
Pastor Nick Neves fought the attacker for 15 minutes before police arrived pic.twitter.com/88UELrv3BB
— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) November 30, 2024
“[The suspect] came at me through the kitchen holding a box of our materials,” Neves told the outlet. “At that point, I told him to stop, and he didn’t want to stop, so he ran and I ran after him and grabbed a hold of him. But I didn’t get a hold of him until we got out to the parking lot.”
The pastor employed techniques he learned from jiu-jitsu and kickboxing to neutralize the suspect until police arrived, according to the local report. Neves said the struggle lasted for 12 to 15 minutes. (RELATED: Man Pulls Gun On Pastor Mid-Sermon, Chaos Ensues)
“Just using positioning, and I tried to maintain back control on the gentleman so that he wasn’t able to strike at me very effectively,” he said. “And I tried to keep control of his hands, so that if he had a weapon of some kind, I would be able to keep him from getting that weapon and using it against me.”
“What I didn’t want to see is just him run off and then come back later and rob us again,” Neves continued. “You can find that, sometimes, there becomes a pattern where you get victimized a lot if you don’t do anything to stand up for yourself.”
“Being a loving person doesn’t mean you have to be a weak person, and humility and strength are not antithesis to each other. If there’s a situation where you need to stand up for yourself, I don’t think you have to apologize for that.”
The Antioch Police Department (APD) released a somehwat tongue-in-cheek statement about the incident in a Facebook post Thursday.
“When the burglar saw his wicked deeds had been discovered he decided to fight with the pastor instead of repent. What he did not know was the pastor would win this battle of good and evil and he held down the perp until APD arrived and placed the man in custody. We are thankful today that the pastor was uninjured during this incident and hopeful that with amazing community members like we have been highlighting lately, we can turn the tide on crime in our city,” the statement reads.
The suspect used the axe pictured in APD’s Facebook post to break into the church, police alleged.
“Hopefully I get a chance to speak to this guy again,” Neves told KGO-TV. “I hope I have an opportunity to meet him in better circumstances, and maybe to talk to him a little bit without the panic of him getting arrested.”
