Blind ex-gang member fights off teen robbers

DALLAS -- A blind, former gang member managed to fight off a couple of teen robbers who are members of the same gang he helped create decades ago.

"The police couldn't believe that a blind guy had disarmed two robbery suspects," said Lamont Levels, who is now an anti-gang activist.

Levels was one of eight original founders of the first Bloods gangs in Dallas, WFAA reports. He lost his sight 15 years ago, after he was shot during a drug deal. Levels now runs a gang-intervention non-profit called Now Eye See, Inc.

On Aug. 23, police said Levels was walking up to his house when he was struck in the back of the head with a gun and knocked to the ground.

Without saying a word, one of his attackers searched his pockets while the other held him from behind. Levels figured out that the teen holding him must have had the gun and tried to grab it. But his attacker bit him in the back and screamed for his accomplice to help him. Levels recognized the teen's voice.

He finally managed to grab the gun and fire a few shots, scaring the pair away. Police said one of the teens was grazed by a bullet. Levels said he recognized the weapon, because it had an extended clip.

"Don't too many people walk around here with an extended gun and there's only one guy that had that type of gun, so I knew it was him," Levels said.

They got away with the money, but police said one of the alleged robbers was later taken into custody. The other is on the run.

"Back in my day, when I was a gang member, we respected our senior citizens, our elderly, and our disabled," he told WFAA. "I see why so many of our young kids are dying - because they have no respect for no one."

Levels said he hopes the teens eventually see that they can choose a better path in life, before it's too late.

"Everybody says that I was lucky, that I was blessed, and that might be true," Levels said, "but I look at the same time that the young guy that I didn't shoot that he's lucky and he's blessed, because he was coming to rob me and he could have ended up being dead."