Anthony Miranda ((police photo))

Liam Ford

Tribune reporter

1:57 p.m. CST, December 5, 2011

 

A man who tried to rob a mixed martial-arts expert at gunpoint found himself no match for his intended victim this weekend, police said.

Anthony Miranda, 24, faces a charge of discharging a weapon during a robbery in the Southwest Side attack, which left him wounded in the ankle and badly bruised from his confrontation with the 33-year-old man he robbed, police said.

The victim was sitting in his car near Kenneth Avenue and 55th Street about 11:30 p.m. Friday when a man came up to the car and asked him for a light, said Chicago Police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli.

The man in the car replied that he didn't have a light, and the other man pulled out a handgun and demanded the driver's valuables, Mirabelli said. The driver handed over his cash, wallet and valuables, and the gunman then ordered him out of the car.

At some point, the older man was able to grab hold of the handgun, and during a struggle, the robber discharged a round, striking himself in the ankle, Mirabelli said.

The victim was able to hold the robber until police arrived. When he turned the robber over to police, the victim told them that he participates in Ultimate Fighting Championships, a mixed-martial arts competition, Mirabelli said.

After being treated at Holy Cross Hospital, Miranda appeared in Cook County Bond Court Sunday and was ordered held in lieu of $350,000 bail.

Miranda, of the 8900 block of Bronx Avenue in Skokie, is on parole in several 2007 residential burglary cases for which he was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released from prison in March 2010.

He previously served time for convictions in two 2005 burglary cases.