A group of Southern Baptist missionaries from North Carolina prayed after two of their number tackled a man who tried to steal a woman's purse in Jackson Heights, Queens.

The thief who snatched a taupe, buckle-covered bag from a young woman with a glossy black ponytail and designer sunglasses on Thursday afternoon in Queens might have thought it would be an easy crime.

His well-dressed mark was strolling in Jackson Heights, on a bare and blighted pedestrian plaza near 37th Road, off Broadway, around 1:55 p.m. It seemed he could make a getaway through the thin crowd.

 

He most likely did not expect the firefighter who came sprinting after him, throwing him off balance. Or the two strapping church missionaries, young men visiting from North Carolina, who hurtled into the fray and tackled him to the ground.

But none of them counted on the purse snatcher having a gun.

One missionary, Andre Aganbi, 19, a student at Duke University, had spent the day on the plaza with his church group peers from Durham, reading the Bible and chatting with passers-by about God. "We were sitting right there, so I just jumped up, and as he tripped, I threw him to the ground," he said.

Mr. Aganbi, who pounced on the man along with Mark Haywood, 21, from the church group, said he had glimpsed something polished and brown in the pocket of the man's cargo pants.

"He started slowly reaching for his pocket," Mr. Aganbi said. "By the time I thought about it, he grabbed the gun, pointed it at someone who was behind him, lifted it up and shot it, and ran."

The police said on Thursday night that the suspect was still at large.

The someone behind the gunman was a firefighter from Engine 287, who happened to be on the corner of the plaza and had sprinted with others after the man, his radio across his chest.

The shot came so close, it left graze marks on the firefighter's shorts, said Richard Torres, a firefighter with Engine 287 who was also at the scene. The round hit a cellphone shop.

Within 10 minutes, the police had roped off the area. On the trash-strewn plaza, which had been cleared of people, behind a barricade of yellow caution tape, a bullet hole and the shooter's navy baseball cap remained.

And the young missionaries.

Their arms around each other in a prayer circle, they stood by as their two friends were taken aside for questioning by detectives. With an almost eerie level of calm, each of the young people thanked the Lord.

"If anything had happened to Andre or Mark, they would be going to heaven, and they would be rejoicing with our Lord, because they trust in Christ so completely," said Katharine Batchelor, 18, who was traveling with her peers on an eight-week mission from the Summit, a Southern Baptist church based in Raleigh, N.C.

Her voice trembled. "It's just a beautiful thing," she said.

Local residents and shop owners were far less stoic. The plaza on which the shooting took place has been rife with controversy since the road was blocked off to create it late last year. It is the same area where a State Supreme Court justice, Thomas D. Raffaele, 69, said a police officer struck him after an unruly crowd surrounded the officer as he arrested a local vagrant. The episode is being investigated by the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau.

Bystanders on Thursday were quick to blame the plaza, saying the reduced traffic had decimated businesses, with tables perpetually staked out by vagrants.

"The quality of the neighborhood has gone tremendously down," said Agha Saleh, who owns the Internet cafe next to the shop that was struck. Last week, he said, a man stripped naked and ran into a nearby store. "Robberies, guns, drugs - so many things are happening every single day."

But the missionaries were still cheerful, even as some climbed into a patrol van for more questioning at the precinct. As they headed out, the two young men joked about the tense phone calls they would be making to their parents that night.

"What did you do today?" Mr. Aganbi said, pantomiming the call. "Hung out, chased some guy, almost got shot. Shared the Gospel."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/nyregion/a-thief-in-queens-is-thwarted-by-missionaries.html?_r=1&emc=eta1