It happened just after 10 p.m. Wednesday outside Philippe Chow on East 60th Street.
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The mask-wearing suspects emerged from a dark-colored SUV and descended on two men who were dining at different tables.
Video first obtained by Eyewitness News shows the incident unfold:
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One suspect stole a 31-year-old man's Rolex Stainless Steel Submariner.
The other suspect approached a 28-year-old man on a date at a separate table to rob him.
That victim resisted and struggled with the suspect, grabbing his gun, which suddenly went off.
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The victim, later identified as Melchior Cooke, was shot in the leg, and the startled suspect dropped the weapon and fled.
Cooke, a plumber with a 4-year-old son, staggered onto the sidewalk and placed the gun in the restaurant.
First-arriving police officers placed a tourniquet around Cooke's leg before he was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell with a non-life-threatening injury.
His mother, Lisa Cooke, said she was breathing a sigh of relief on Thursday that her son is OK.
"I have nine kids...I would expect that from him, he's not going to let anyone do that...pull a gun out and rob him -- he's not going to let that happen..my kids aren't that type of kids," Cooke said.
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"We believe the patrons have no connection to another, the two perps come out, they go right to the tables that each individual was sitting at, we believe this is a robbery for high-end jewelry," said NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig.
So far, no arrests have been made.
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