Guard: ‘I grabbed the barrel of the gun’

For Ken Krug, Dec. 22 started out as a day like any other. He went to work as a security guard at the Tourneau store in Roosevelt Field Mall, and attended to his regular duties there.

Around 11:30 a.m., the Baldwin resident, said he noticed two customers come in. The two men looked at watches in one of the cases in the Rolex section of the store, and spoke with a sales clerk. No watches were removed from the cases and the men left, he said.

About 12:45, one man returned. He asked to speak with the same clerk, who was busy with another customer. Soon, though, the clerk was free, and went to attend to the man, Krug said.

The man asked to see a Rolex watch worth $18,750. The clerk removed the watch from the case and, following store policy, signaled to Krug that he was taking the customer back to a private area to look at the watch.

Then Krug’s day got … interesting.

The men were in a small nook in the back of the shop that is set aside for viewing high-priced items. Situated behind a wall, the area measures only about 7 by 10 feet, Krug said, and has just a table and a couple of chairs.

“I was just standing there,” Krug said. “They were talking about financing, layaway. Then the man just reached into his jacket with his right hand, stood and started pulling out a gun.

“I saw there was no time to react, no time to pull my gun,” Krug recounted. “As his arm was coming around, I just reached out with my right hand and grabbed the barrel of the gun.”

He said he pushed the gunman toward the back of the enclosure. “We went flying into the back wall,” he said. “We were just struggling.” Their fight for control of the weapon moved back into the Rolex section of the store.

“We were still inside the store, by the front door,” Krug said. “As we got to the front door, he pulled the trigger, with my hand still on the barrel.” The gun fired.

Krug, a former New York City police officer, said that he and the gunman wrestled their way out into the mall, which was filled with Christmas shoppers. Still hanging onto the weapon’s barrel, Krug said he focused on trying to keep the gun low in the hope that no one would get shot.

“I remember yelling for help,” he said. “I don’t know what was going on around me. I could see to my left,” as a mall security guard was coming up the stairs. He said he could also see that the next store over, a jeweler, was empty. He later learned that the store’s occupants had heard the gunshot, ran to the back of their store and locked themselves in.

Krug’s goal, he said, was to get the gunman out of the open area of the mall, where there were more potential targets. “I’m trying to hit him against the side wall,” he recalled. “The next thing, two mall security guards were trying to hit him, to get him to release the gun. … I took my left hand and pried his fingers off the gun. At that point he was taken to the ground and secured. I saw handcuffs on the floor and gave them to a guard. And I had the weapon.”

The entire incident, “from start to finish lasted about 90 seconds,” he said, adding that it seemed much longer.

Later, he said, he was told that the .380-caliber weapon likely would not have discharged again. It was a semi-automatic, but a slide on top didn’t fully move because Krug was holding the barrel. Consequently, the spent shell wasn’t ejected, blocking another round from loading into the chamber.

With the gunman on the ground, Krug said, “I was covering him with my gun, and saw a couple of off-duty Nassau County police officers. They had my back. They were just shopping.”

That was when Krug learned that someone had been shot. The victim was a Macy’s employee on a break, Krug said.

The gunman, whom police identified as Oliver Lee, 21, of Douglaston, Queens, was arraigned on charges including assault with intent of serious injury with a weapon, first-degree robbery and first-degree criminal use of a firearm. He was remanded on $750,000 bond and was to return to court this month.

During the ordeal, Krug said, he wasn’t afraid. “There was no time to be afraid,” he said. “That happened afterward.” He added, “I wasn’t afraid so much as shaken up.”

Despite his 21 years with the NYPD, Krug said he never encountered a situation like the one at the mall. “I worked in some real bad areas with the Police Department,” he said. “But you don’t have too much hand-to-hand combat with a gun like that.”

Krug, who says he is a 47-year resident of Baldwin, now works for a security firm, New York Finest Protection and Investigative Services. Among the firm’s other clients are other Tourneau stores in the region. Krug has been at the Roosevelt Field outlet for about 14 months.

Despite the scare, he said, his family, including his son and daughter, is standing behind him. “I’m already back to work,” he said. “There were no second thoughts. I went back to work a couple of days later. I’m OK.”