Updated: 3:36 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014 | Posted: 3:37 p.m. Monday, Aug. 25, 2014
Armed & dangerous: 89-year-old World War II veteran shoots armed robber
PBSO: 89-year-old Lake Park jeweler stands ground, shoots armed robber
By Jorge Milian
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Arthur M. Lewis may be elderly, but criminals are learning the North Palm Beach man is no easy mark.
The 89-year-old decorated World War II veteran foiled an armed robbery attempt Saturday afternoon at his Lake Park jewelry business that left a 44-year-old suspect with six gunshot wounds, but no loot.
Lewis was working behind the counter at The Jewelry Exchange at 900 N. Federal Highway when he was approached by a gun-wielding man around 3 p.m., according to an arrest report from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Lewis said he immediately grabbed the suspect’s revolver and pulled out a .38-caliber handgun from his own pocket.
The two men wrestled for several minutes and fired shots at each other. Despite battling someone half his age, Lewis got the best of it. A man identified by the sheriff’s office as Lennard Patrick Jervis, a Miramar resident, was shot six times by Lewis, including four times in the chest. Lewis’ left arm was grazed by a bullet, but he was otherwise unscathed.
No one else was in the store at the time.
“I thought he was going to kill me as soon as I saw the gun,” Lewis told The Palm Beach Post on Monday afternoon. “I thought, ‘This time, I’m dead.’ ”
Saturday was not the first time Lewis has traded gunfire with would-be robbers.
On Jan. 5, 2010, Brandon Jerard Johnson, 20....
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/nationa...s-shoot/ng9Dc/
Photo of the promising young man with a bright future: