A pastor in Brooklyn, New York, was robbed at gunpoint by three men while he livestreamed a sermon Sunday, according to a story from silive.com.
The men kicked open the back door to the sanctuary a few minutes into Bishop Lamor Whitehead’s message and made their way toward him with guns drawn, the video shows.
“I said, ‘Alright, alright, alright,’ pretty much stating that I’m not going to do anything because I know you’re coming for me. You’re coming straight to me. I don’t want my parishioners hurt. I’ve got women and children there,” Whitehead, of Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries, said.
The thieves stole $400,000 worth of jewelry off Whitehead and his wife, the pastor said.
“When I see them come into the sanctuary with their guns, I told everybody, ‘Get down,’” Whitehead said in a video posted on Instagram. “I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot my church up or if they were coming for a robbery.”
“As I got down, one went to my wife and took all her jewelry and had the gun in front of my 8-month-old baby’s face. Took off my bishop’s ring, my wedding band and took off my bishop’s chain, and then I had chains underneath my robe and he started tapping my neck to see if anything else. So that means they knew. They watched and they knew that I have other jewelry,” he explained.
“I was born without jewelry, jewelry don’t make me,” Whitehead said after the attack in a live video to his 1.3 million Instagram followers.
According to police, three “unidentified individuals entered the location, robbed the victim and fled the scene in a white Mercedes traveling Eastbound on Avenue D.”
Whitehead has been in the media recently — in May, he tried to broker the surrender of Andrew Abdullah, the man arrested in the shooting and killing of a passenger on a New York subway train.
Abdullah has pleaded not guilty to the charges.