Man dazes armed mugger to save his £10,000 watch

A video captured by CCTV camera showed a man taking a split-second decision to prevent his £10,000 Rolex watch from being snatched by an armed mugger by throwing it onto the roof of a nearby shop.

The incident was reported from Basildon, Essex on Monday evening where a businessman, Mark Ewart, faced a masked mugger armed with a 12-inch knife after walking out of his flooring business.

CCTV camera captured the moments when the father-of-two Ewart has almost risked his life just to save his expensive watch by throwing it onto the roof of the Subway sandwich shop next door despite receiving threats from the thug for being stabbed.

His moved dazed the yob, however, he snatched Ewart’s £3,500 laptop instead and fled on a bike.

The 57-year-old resident of Rayleigh Essex managed to retrieve his watch from the roof and found it still works.

Ewart was quoted by Dailymail UK while saying, ‘I’m not sure why I did, I just remember thinking ‘What am I prepared to lose?’

‘When it happened I was just distressed and upset. The knife was about 12 to 15 inches long, like a big kitchen knife, it was terrifying.

‘He kept saying he was going to stab me up and I got my watch off and in the spur of the moment I went to hand it to him and flung it on to the roof of Subway.

‘But thankfully he just looked perplexed, appeared to think about it for a minute and snatched my laptop.’

He added: ‘I lived to tell the tale but maybe I was stupid – I don’t know. I really don’t know if I did the right thing – I would love to get my laptop back though.’

A spokesman for Essex Police confirmed the force is investigating the incident, which took place at 6.30pm on Monday, March 2 and that reports had been made that the knife in question was at least 12 inches long.