Comedian batters would-be mugger

[faceless]

Joke’s on would-be mugger as comedian clobbers him
Jessica Van Sack
November 16, 2009
bostonherald.com

If all the world’s a stage, then comedian Daniel Faneuf is in the running for best fight scene, having gotten the better of a mugger who held him at gunpoint - in real life, according to police and the comic himself. “I turn around and it’s a guy I’ve never seen, and he says, ‘I’m sorry to have to do this’ and pulled out a gun and put it to my throat,” recalled Faneuf, a 26-year-old stage-trooper at Boston’s Improv Asylum who was attacked on his way home from work early Friday.

It was shortly after 1 a.m. and Faneuf was within eyeshot of his home on Washington Street in Central Square in Cambridge when someone grabbed his arm, he said. “I was just very mad, and maybe a little scared,” Faneuf said. Faneuf grabbed the assailant and reversed the gun toward his chest, according to Faneuf, who believes his improv training is largely responsible for his quick action under duress.

Faneuf described the would-be mugger as about 6-foot-2, 180 pounds, and added, “I’m 250 pounds, 6-foot-4, so I don’t know what he was doing. I just punched him in the face,” Faneuf said, describing how the two grappled with the gun until the suspect was face-down on the ground. “He’s struggling with the gun in his hand, and after I hit him a bunch of times he slowed down. Eventually I have the barrel of the gun in one hand, and I’m holding him down with my other hand,” Faneuf said, adding that he resorted to pistol-whipping the still-resistant mugger - until the gun shattered into pieces on the ground.

The suspect took the opportunity to make a run for it when Faneuf dialed 911 on his cell phone. “So I had to drop the phone, grab him and hit him again,” Faneuf said.

Responding cops initially weren’t sure which man was the victim - but they ended up carting away the mugger, whose name wasn’t released, in a backbrace, according to Faneuf.

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