This Guy Refused To Give Up His Louis Vuitton Bag To An Armed Robber 'Cause He "Worked Hard" For It
"You’re not getting my Louis Vuitton."
Jerad Kluting, 31, from Holland, Michigan, experienced a terrifying moment while walking home last week when an armed man demanded he hand over his $1,700 Louis Vuitton bag.
Kluting told BuzzFeed News he was out running errands and shopping on May 14 when he decided to walk home.
"I took the same route that I've walked home hundreds of times," he said.
Kluting saw a man approaching him and it set off alarms in him instantly, he recalled.
"It's like a premonition when you feel a threat," he said. And his instincts were unfortunately correct.
Kluting said the man covered his mouth with a bandana and pulled a gun out of his waistband and pointed it directly at him. The robber then demanded Kluting hand over a Louis Vuitton bag he was carrying that day.
Not only did Kluting refuse to hand it over, he told the armed robber, "'You’re not getting my Louis Vuitton.' I worked very hard for this and this bag I’ve had forever and it means a lot to me."
"I wasn’t about ready to relinquish it to some thug that was going to demand it from me ... I paid $1,700 for it. I love Louis Vuitton," Kluting first told local station WOOD-TV.
"I saw this bag long before I could buy it and I saved up to buy it. It represents me.”
Kluting told BuzzFeed News after relaying all of this to the robber, the gunman fired two shots next to him and demanded the bag again. Kluting said he saw the shell casings fly out of the gun.
"That's when I turned and ran north. He pursued me that time and he fired two more shots. On the fourth one his gun jammed and he had to reload it."
Kluting said he was scared, and was "waiting for the [shot] to hit" him, when he looked back and saw the perpetrator trying to flee the scene.
"I didn't have time to think — I just reacted," he recalled.
Fortunately (with miraculous fortune), Kluting made it out of the incident unharmed. Shortly afterward, police located the suspect and arrested him.
According to WOOD-TV, police found a stolen handgun on the 21-year-old suspect.
Ottawa County Police did not immediately return a BuzzFeed News request for comment.
Kluting said it was not really about the bag: "Yes, I do love Louis Vuitton," he said, "but I wasn’t going to be intimidated by this bully."
"That bag has even more meaning to me now, but it was about not backing down. It was the difference between right and wrong. In that moment, I made a split-second decision."
However, Kluting said that if it were to happen again, he'd give the Louis up.
His uncle, John Hascher, whose home Kluting ran to shortly after the incident, told BuzzFeed News his nephew is "lucky to be alive."
"It was impulsive," Hascher said. "Next time he said he would probably give up the bag."
Kluting said he's received messages from people around the country calling him a "hero" for what he did. But Kluting doesn't consider himself one. "Gun violence is a national issue," he said. "The kids and parents of Santa Fe and Parkland are heroes."
The attempted robbery occurred days before the high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, that left 10 students and staff members dead, he noted. Kluting wants this attention on him to also shed light on a national issue.
"There's been so much about gun violence in this country. I am not a hero. The real heroes are people and families that have been affected by gun violence, who are getting up and having to deal with tragedy."
"It's time we took a stand against it," Kluting stated. "I'm still processing everything and what my direct views are about what happened to me, but gun violence as a whole is a national issue."
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Tanya Chen is a social news reporter for BuzzFeed and is based in Chicago.
Contact Tanya Chen at tanya.chen@buzzfeed.com.
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