Witness Refutes Claim Trump Stopped Midtown Mugging: Reports

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A witness to a violent Midtown Manhattan robbery in 1991 is refuting claims that President Donald Trump confronted a bat-wielding mugger, according to multiple reports.

Kathleen Romeo-Nunez was 16 years old in 1991, when she walked out of a store on West 45th St. and Ninth Avenue to come upon the tail-end of a mugging, she told the Daily News. A few minutes later, up pulls the limo of Donald Trump — then just a wealthy New York City real estate developer. Romeo-Nunez, now 43, told the Daily News that Trump got out of the limo, surveyed the scene and got back into his car.

"A car pulls up, he gets out, people acknowledge his presence," the witness told The Daily News. "He's looking around, seeing what's going on. Then he got back in and left."

The 1991 tabloids spin a different tale.

"Call it The Donald to The Rescue," led a 1991 Daily News story with the headline "Mugger’s Trumped." An anonymous witness then describes a heroic scene in which the future president yells at the bat-wielding mugger to stop the assault. It's a story that Trump — after a brief moment of coyness — confirms with the Daily News.

"The guy with the bat looked at me, and I said, 'Look, you’ve gotta stop this. Put down the bat,'" Trump told the Daily News in 1991. "I guess he recognized me because he said, 'Mr. Trump, I didn’t do anything wrong.'"

The only named source in the initial story other than Trump is Romeo-Nunez, who claimed that the real estate mogul didn't get involved.

The decades-old story recently resurfaced due to statements the president made about the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. During a meeting with several governors, Trump criticized the officers who didn't stop the Florida gunman who carried out the massacre, saying they "weren't exactly Medal of Honor winners."

Trump then went on to say that if it had been him and the governors in charge of stopping the mass murder, things might have played out differently.

"I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon and I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too," Trump said.

Seventeen students and teachers were killed in the Valentine's Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

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