Owner Pistol Whipped, Bound With Extension Cord As Men Ransacked Edison Restaurant
EDISON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Police are searching for two men who stabbed and robbed a New Jersey restaurant owner at gunpoint in broad daylight.
"I was praying, don't shoot me, don't shoot me, don't kill me," Sunil Pendse told CBS2's Marc Liverman.
A gun was pointed at his head and there was no one around to hear Pendse scream.
Pendse had been doing paperwork at Shezan -- a restaurant and banquet hall on Oak Tree Road -- on Tuesday afternoon. He heard a noise and walked to the front.
"As I walked here, the guy from here and hit me. One guy hit me with the bottom of the gun," he said.
Pendse was knocked down -- struck so hard that he briefly blacked out.
"I was lying here on the floor, and they said, 'don't move, I'll kill you," he said.
The damage was everywhere -- broken glass, knocked over tables, and coins from the cash register were all over the floor.
Pendse said the men also asked him for a safe. He told him he didn't have one, so they dragged him by the collar toward his office, and asked for more money.
"They kept hitting me here, back here," he said, "A guy was punching me."
As Pendse was being lead to his office he felt a sharp pain along his upper arm. One of the men had started to stab him over and over again.
"They kept asking me money, they kept stabbing me. I went just like this to defend myself," he said.
Pendse said the men used an extension cord to lock him in his office while they searched the rest of the building for money. For nearly 10 minutes, he laid in silence and prayed the men would leave before he called 911.
Pendse spent Tuesday night in the hospital. In the end, the thieves got away with more than $1,500 in cash, his watch, and his wedding band, but spared him his life.
"Thank god I'm alive. That's what I could say, because the way they were acting, behaving for the money, I could have got killed. I'm happy that I'm alive," he said.
So far, police haven't released any suspect descriptions.
Pendse said he plan on installing surveillance cameras at the restaurant and hopes to reopen for business on Wednesday.