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Restaurant Owner Serves Knuckle Sandwich To Alleged iPhone Thief

Justin Ballog
Justin Ballog (Cook County Sheriff's Dept.)

(CBS) – A Lincoln Park restaurant owner used his martial arts skills to capture a suspected iPhone thief.

Jason Chan thought a man in his restaurant Juno seemed a little suspicious when he entered last Thursday and approached the bar.

When he left, Chan asked a customer there if the man had taken his iPhone; sure enough, it was gone.

Chan remembered the man's distinctive striped sweater and tracked him down to another nearby restaurant, Lou Malnati's.

"I tried grabbing him and at that point he basically fought me off and he then tried to leave the restaurant," Chan tells CBS 2. "We actually broke the door of the restaurant, of Lou Malnati's, and then he was very adversarial. He tried getting physical with me, and at that point I kind of neutralized him."

The restaurateur says he held the suspect for police. Chan tells the Chicago Sun-Times he is a practitioner of the martial art Shidokan.

The suspect, Justin Ballog, was charged with misdemeanor theft. His bond was set at $10,000, according to the Cook County Sheriff's Office.

"What's right is right," Chan says.

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