Firass Dirani made a name for himself playing organised crime figure John Ibrahim on Underbelly, but he found himself on the other side of the law earlier this week, when he made a citizens’ arrest of a shoplifter.
Nice sunny day for a citizens arrest on the first day of spring. @mofidd
— Firass Dirani (@FirassD) September 1, 2015
The 31-year-old actor sent out a cryptic tweet about the incident, and in a recent interview with the Herald Sun, explained that he chased down a man who had stolen some meat from a nearby Coles.
He told the Herald that he was returning from lunch with a cousin when he saw the man run in front of his car in an agitated state, and made the “impulsive” decision to chase after him.
“I thought, ‘this isn’t going to happen today, it’s not going to happen again on my watch’,” he said, explaining that he had seen shoplifters steal from his family’s convenience store for years, and he’d had enough.
He said he chased the man through the streets of Richmond for around 15 minutes, then:
“I thought he was too far gone then I looked up the road and he was only 120m up the road and I thought, I am going to commit to this. I ran in the middle of the street, cars were stopping in front of me, then I saw him turn left down an alleyway and knew I was in it for the long haul. After a while he kind of slowed down, and I yelled out at him, then I caught up to him and pushed him against the wall and grabbed him. He succumbed and surrendered and I stayed with him until everyone else caught up.”
After catching the man, Dirani took a picture of him for police, and then, upon giving him some “life advice”, left him in the hands of Coles staff, so he could go home and learn some lines for an audition.
At least one person remained fairly unimpressed by his heroics. “When I called my mum to tell her, she gave me a verbal beating,” he explained. “She said ‘How dare you … what if the guy had a knife, are you kidding me, think before you act’.”
Dirani can currently be seen in the fourth season of Nine’s House Husbands.
via Herald Sun
Photo: Brendon Thorne via Getty Images
Photo: Brendon Thorne via Getty Images
