The target of a brutal daylight robbery outside a Beverly Hills eatery that yielded a $ 500,000 watch – and left an innocent shot of bystanders – told The Post about the terrifying ambush on Friday.
Jewelry store Shay Belhassen said he was sitting with a customer at famed hotspot Il Pastaio on Thursday afternoon when three armed thieves came after him and attempted to get his $ 500,000 Richard Mille timepiece.
“One of them strangled me from behind with a gun to my head, while the other took my arm and the third ripped the watch off my hand,” Belhassen told The Post in a phone interview – referring to his RM 11-03 rose gold Flyback chronograph, a favorite of celebrities like Kanye West and Kevin Hart and tennis player Rafael Nadal.
I took a chance and grabbed the gun and wrestled them to the ground. They tried to pull the trigger, ”Belhassen said.
Four shots rang out during the fight, the jewelry store said, and one of the slugs hit a woman in the leg who was sitting in the restaurant with her boyfriend.
‘I believe one of them [the robbers] got shot while they were wrestling with me on the ground, ”he said. The eyewitnesses said he ran holding his stomach. I know while we were fighting on the ground a few bullets were fired. I believe one of them hit him. “
He added that he was happy to escape the robbery with his life.
‘They came to shoot. They didn’t come to play. There was no fear in their eyes, ”he said.