Around 3AM this morning, Michael Grimes a 41 year-old man wearing a mask attempted to rob The Golden Dove Diner on Richmond Avenue in Staten Island. Grimes pointed a .38 caliber semi-automatic handgun at the cashier & announced that it was a robbery. Little did he know, two plainclothes officers from the 122nd precinct were inside the diner enjoying a meal break.
Hit the jump to find out what happened once the officers realized Grimes was sticking the place up!
Amanda Mullen
Police shot a masked man who tried to hold up a Staten Island diner Thursday morning, apparently after an earlier robbery in New Jersey, police said.
Michael Grimes, 41, an ex-con with five previous robbery arrests, walked into the 24-hour Golden Dove Diner on Richmond Ave. at 3:10 a.m.
Armed with a .380 cailiber semi-automatic handgun and wearing a green camouflage mask and black hoodie, Grimes pointed his gun at the cashier and announced a robbery, according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
Unbeknownst to Grimes, two plainclothes cops from the 122nd Precinct were inside the diner on their meal break, sitting in a booth with the owner’s cousin and Barbara Butler, a 22-year-old waitress on the job for just three weeks,
“I thought it was a Halloween prank,” Butler said. “Then I saw the man pull out this gun and start waving it around.”
With no one at the register, Grimes headed straight for the owner’s cousin and calmly told him to “open the register,” Butler said.
The cousin and Butler both ducked for cover, but the cops, both wearing bullet-resistant vests, identified themselves.
“The cops said, ‘Don’t do this – we are police. You don’t want to do this. Put the gun down,'” Butler recalled.
Instead, she said, the suspect fired once and ran.
The officers gave chase and about 11 other shots were fired in the parking lot, according to a police source.
Struck in the leg, Grimes jumped into a 1996 maroon Dodge Stratus he had stolen and sped off through a Walgreen’s parking lot and east on Gurley Ave., Browne said.
About a mile away, Grimes crashed into a fence on Stone Lane, a dead end street, and jumped out, tossing his gun under the car.
A phalanx of NYPD and MTA cops caught up to him and arrested him. His gun was also recovered.
Grimes also dropped a Yankees baseball cap stuffed with cash that detectives believe he stole in another armed robbery in Perth Amboy, N.J. earlier Thursday morning, Browne said.
A Staten Island resident, Grimes is in stable conditon at Staten Island University North Hospital.
A few hours after the shooting, Butler was still shaken.
“Thank God the police were there,” she said. “Thank God, Who knows how this could have turned out?
“It’s fate.”
