By Rick Hynum
Louie Suljovic is a fulltime pizza guy—and a part-time crime fighter when he has to be.
For the second time in the past four years, Suljovic, the owner of Louie’s Pizza in Elmhurst, New York, recently intervened to protect his customers from an agitated man allegedly wielding a blade. A few days later, he prevented an alleged drunk driver from fleeing the scene of a car accident, according to the New York Post.
Thankfully, his most recent act of bravery—which took place on April 1—left Suljovic unharmed. But an earlier one, on March 26, 2022, earned him a punctured lung while his equally brave father and business partner, Cazim Suljovic, was stabbed nine times.
Let’s start with the April 1 incident. As the Post reports, Suljovic saw trouble coming when the suspect, identified as Jose Guadfebles, burst into Louie’s Pizza waving a box cutter in a threatening manner. “I had to de-escalate the situation,” Suljovic told the Post. “He got very nasty, told us to give him an ‘F-ing slice,’ and was very aggressive toward my customers. So I gave him a slice.”
The suspect then left the pizzeria, and the tense situation appeared to be defused. Until he returned.
This time, Suljovic was ready. “Once I saw him reaching for the knife, I grabbed him,” said Suljovic, who is ex-military. “I had a full house, and I wanted to protect the people here.”
Suljovic and some employees cornered Guadfebles to keep him away from the pizzeria’s customers. “We got into a scuffle,” Suljovic said. “I ripped the knife out of his jacket and got it out of the way. We were tussling, holding him down, and the glass door cracked.”
Police soon arrived, seized the box cutter and arrested Guadfebles on charges of criminal mischief and menacing. However, as WPIX has reported, the suspect was later released without bail.
So what happened next?
The Post says the suspect, having been freed by local authorities, returned again to Louie’s Pizza, while Suljovic was being interviewed about the previous incident for a video produced by Queens Together, a nonprofit supporting local restaurants.
“I was, like, wait a second. That’s him. He’s back,” Suljovic said. “You can’t make this stuff up.”
Suljovic chased away the suspect, who was arrested again and this time held on $5,000 cash bail.
Suljovic’s heroics have made an impression on Matt Caputo, a reporter for the New York Post. In an Instagram video posted on Tuesday, Caputo stated, “I’ve known Louie for a while, and he’s a lot like a character out of Death Wish or something—very protective of his neighborhood and his turf.”
But Suljovic wasn’t done yet. A few days later, a car accident took place outside Louie’s Pizza. An alleged drunk driver reportedly attempted to flee the scene but had to stop and wait for a traffic light. Suljovic ran up to his car, opened the driver’s door and snatched the keys out of the ignition, effectively detaining the hit-and-run suspect until police arrived.
Then there was the deadly serious March 2022 incident. According to news reports at the time, a group of men assaulted Eun Hee Chang, an older Asian woman, outside Louie’s Pizza. The ever-vigilant Suljovic and his father, Cazim, immediately ran outside and chased them down. Despite being unarmed, the father-and-son pizza makers wrestled with and ultimately subdued two of the three suspects and restrained them while waiting for police.
But both pizza men paid a price. Cazim Suljovic, then 68, was stabbed nine times, while Louie Suljovic took a stab wound near his spine; it punctured his lung and landed him in the hospital.
It should be noted that Chang, who also sustained a stabbing wound, was a regular customer at Louie’s. At the time, Suljovic told Today.com that he had one thought when he saw Chang being attacked: “Somebody is in trouble, and they need help. That’s it.”
“We’re not going to let stuff like that happen,” he added. “We take care of our community.”
That community, called Dunningham Triangle, clearly has a crime problem, as the Post emphasized. And if anything, “things have gotten worse” since the March 2022 incident, Suljovic said.
But the pizza man isn’t going anywhere. “I’m a part of my community,” he said. “What am I going to do? Leave everybody behind? I didn’t run in 2022, and I’m not running now.”
