A top New York City real estate broker interrupted a trio of baby-faced bandits stealing his client’s Mercedes outside a luxury brownstone — but it was Manhattan gridlock that ended up foiling the would-be carjackers, The Post has learned.
Andrew Azoulay, a luxury broker at Douglas Elliman, said he was moving his client’s Mercedes G-Wagon around 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 5, when he jogged across the street to lock the front door of the client’s ritzy TriBeCa townhouse.
He’d left the car unlocked for all of 30 seconds — but when he turned around, he saw the taillights were on, and realized his client’s $250,000 SUV was getting jacked.
“I was like, what the f–k? How could the car be moving?” Azoulay told The Post on Monday. “It did not feel good.”
Security footage from across the street caught it all go down — with Azoulay and his assistant seen sprinting after the car and hammering on the windows, before it tore off down the street and left them in the dust.
But in a twist of fate, the would-be thieves were stopped in their tracks by a red light — and a wall of traffic outside a fire station at the end of the block.
That’s where Azoulay caught up with the hot wheels, pounding on the windows and pulling on the door handle.
“We ended up yanking him out of the car, and he ran,” Azoulay said of the teenager who was in the driver’s seat.
“The firemen started coming out too. By the time we got there and the firemen got there, the kid knew we had nowhere to go. So he jumped out of his car,” the broker recalled.
Two alleged accomplices, whom Azoulay described also as “kids” or “teens,” also ran off when they saw their friend getting busted, he said.
Police soon descended on the scene and cased the neighborhood, with the NYPD confirming a 14-year-old boy was arrested and charged with grand larceny auto and criminal possession of stolen property in the incident.
“I’m just happy that the [NYPD’s] 1st Precinct was there in a second to make sure everything was recovered,” Azoulay said. “The 1st Precinct was unbelievable. They literally were outside in five minutes and caught these guys in 10.
“I was surprised to see how brazen the kids were,” he said — adding that most New Yorkers know getting around Lower Manhattan at around rush-hour is a fool’s errand.
“If you lived in the neighborhood and you knew the neighborhood, you’d know that you’re getting nowhere at 4 o’clock, because traffic is slammed for the next two hours,” he said.
But Azoulay admitted he didn’t help himself much by leaving the car unlocked with the keys inside.
“It was not the smartest of moves,” he said. “I’ll definitely be locking my doors from now on.”
