A heroic Beach Haven man thwarted a robbery by standing up to four masked men who stormed into his family dairy on Saturday night.
After taking one glimpse of Manav Prasad - a 110kg, 21-year-old rugby prop, power-lifter and ex-boxer - and the would-be bandits fled.
Prasad was closing up the Kauri Park Superette with his 20-year-old sister around 7.35pm when the intruders came in.
"At first I thought it was some last-minute customers, but when one of them jumped up on the counter holding an empty bag I knew I had to act," Prasad said.
"I just grabbed a hockey stick we had for security and started shouting for them to get out of the store and leave us alone."
Prasad appeared to have scared the would-be robbers with his 110kg, 1.87m body frame.
"My heart was racing at a 100 beats a second and I knew it was a do-or-die situation. My sister was at the back, and my first thought was I had to protect her," he said.
"I didn't know if any of them had any weapons, but I had so much adrenaline coming out of nowhere and so I didn't really care."
Prasad said his family had owned the Rangatira Rd dairy for about six years, and had experienced several attacks - including a few ram raids where cash and cigarettes were stolen.
However, he said this was the first time it had been targeted in this way.
Prasad called the police last night after the incident and said he would be making a police statement this morning.
"Now that everything's over, it seems pretty funny. But it was pretty scary as well. I was scared the whole time, but I had to put up a front," Prasad said.
"I spent the whole night thinking about how things could have turned out differently if they had got my sister or something."
Prasad, a former security guard, said it had not been a good year financially for the family business and he didn't want it to face any more losses.
A police spokeswoman said police had received a report of a theft at a shop on Rangatira Rd last night.
"Four teenagers are reported to have entered the store and attempted to take items. No items were taken," she said.
Police were following up with the informant this morning, she said.
