EXCLUSIVE: Heroic Queens bodega worker calmly fights off would-be robber

WOODHAVEN, Queens (WABC) -- A bodega clerk fought back against a would-be robber in Queens after a gun was pointed at him. It turns out the gun wasn't real - the robber knew that, but the clerk most definitely did not.

The incident happened at the bodega on Atlantic Avenue in Woodhaven just before 3 a.m. Thursday.

The victim, Mohammed Abdulrahaman, says a set-up man came in to buy a bag of chips.

"He knew it was going down, because when the first guy came in he seen all four, all three of them walk and then the guy came in and bought chips. And then two minutes later, he saw the guy coming back with the red jacket, and he seen the mask on, he knew some s*** was going down," says Murad Thabet.

Thabet is Abdulrahaman's coworker, and had left the deli an hour before everything happened.

A guy with a mask then walked into the deli armed with a gun.

"He told me 'you have no time to call the police. Give me whole f****** money," Abdulrahaman adds

The 35-year-old clerk remained calm and did not panic - instead, he started dialing 911.

"No, I'm not scared, because if you need to kill me, you kill me," he said.

Abdulrahaman then attempted to jump the counter, only to have a gun shoved in his face. He did not cower or hand over the money - he went right for the handgun, and wrestled it away. He says it was his instinct.

"You need to steal something, you go from the back...but you give like this, why you leave it for my hand? I catch it," says Abdulrahaman.

The suspect left empty-handed.

"He was calm because he knew he had to get shot or either one. He would've gone down, or the other guy would've went down," added Thabet.

Abdulrahaman says he grabbed the gun because he said he needed to live his life, even though the suspect was trying to kill him. This was the first time he was robbed at gunpoint. If he could do it all over again, he says he would not do it differently. He does have a wife and two young kids, so he says from now on after midnight he is closing the front doors of the store, and will only be making sales through the window.