Restaurant Manager’s Tea Bottle Toss Foils Armed Robber

Given his choice of weapons, Charles Wesley would rather arm himself with a pistol than a bottle of Snapple every time.

But in the wee hours of Monday morning, when he hurled the bottle at a man with a gun, the 31-year-old restaurant manager found that a well-aimed lemon-flavored iced tea can do the job quite nicely.

From about 15 feet away, Wesley hit the masked man, who was dressed in black like a Ninja, with the bottle in the face. That gave Wesley enough time to flee, dodging bullets all the way, said Lt. Michael Moore of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“I guess I beat him to the draw,” said Wesley, a soft-spoken Brooklyn native whose wife is five months pregnant.

The incident was actually Wesley’s second crime-fighting adventure. In 1982, he tackled a man who had robbed a woman at knifepoint outside a Panorama City supermarket, for which he was feted by the mayor, police chief and County Board of Supervisors.

Monday’s incident began about 12:15 a.m., when Wesley, 31, was locking up at the Red Robin restaurant on Calabasas Road and heading home, Moore said. As he walked to his car, Wesley saw a man jump into shrubbery at the edge of the parking lot.

Wesley said he thought he had stumbled upon someone relieving himself. He tried to startle the man.

“I was going, ‘OK, whoever’s in the bushes, come out!’ ” Wesley said. The man complied.

“This guy jumps out in this all-black, Ninja-type outfit, wearing a ski mask and has this gun pointed at me,” Wesley said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

The man, kneeling in a firing position, told Wesley to freeze, authorities said.

Instead, Wesley reached into a pocket for the iced tea he had planned to drink on the way home and threw it at the man. “I was very lucky to hit him,” he said.

Wesley said he ran, taking cover first behind a wall and then running in a zigzag to avoid bullets.

The man shot and missed three times, authorities said.

“We couldn’t recommend this type of thing,” said Moore. “But in this case, it did work . . . and no one got hurt.”

Wesley blamed his upbringing. “I grew up in Brooklyn,” he said, “so I guess it just comes second nature.”

Two other employees who were leaving the restaurant at the time told deputies they heard the gunfire and then saw the black-outfitted man hop into a two-door black Cadillac or Monte Carlo and drive away, Moore said. The man escaped.

When Wesley detained the armed robber in Panorama City 12 years ago, he won citations and commendations from some of the city’s most powerful people. This time, all he got was a couple of days off. Still, he believes he did the right thing.

“I thought he was going to rob me, then kill me,” Wesley said. “My wife’s birthday is in two days and I didn’t want to miss it.”