Surveillance footage shows four friends walking on Sixth Avenue at around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night followed by a moped with two men going the opposite direction before the robbery takes place.
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"I saw the gun in his hand, this silver little gun," said Eric Goldie, who was the victim of the stickup. "He pulled it out and he just said, 'Rolex, Rolex, Rolex, give me your Rolex.'"
Goldie tells Eyewitness News he handed it over.
"What am I going to do, argue with the guy holding a gun to my side," he said.
The gunman got back on the moped afterwards fleeing the scene.
The brazen mugging actually happened right in front of an FDNY station near West Houston Street, which has plenty of lighting and foot traffic in the evening.
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Goldie says he and his friends had just had dinner nearby and were seated by a window.
In fact, a server warned them not to leave their phones on the table because they'd be easy for someone to walk in and grab.
That's when Goldie says he pulled his sleeve down and left his watch covered up, until the moment the robber demanded it.
"He knew what kind of watch I was wearing," he said. "And for me, this was the first time I saw the guy. So in my head, I'm thinking now, someone must have tipped him off."
It wasn't the only Rolex reported stolen in the West Village on Wednesday.
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Another man reported to police he was waiting for an Uber on West 11 Street when he was invited into a yellow Lamborghini with two women he'd never met, and that they drugged him and stole his Rolex at about 4 a.m.
Goldie says what happened to him makes him think the city has work to do to get back to how much safer it felt a few years ago before the pandemic.
"It's a different city that we're living in," he said. "But I know New Yorkers are strong, and we'll get through this."
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