Reverend Canon Jean-Baptiste Commins stood in his church parking lot on Monday evening when he heard tires squeal and a loud crash. He quickly ran over to see a young man running from the scene with only one shoe on. Somebody said to stop him, and his instincts kicked in.
As the parish priest, Cn. Commins was wearing a full cassock when the crash took place; this, however, did not stop him from tackling the fleeing suspect. Another member of the church helped him hold the suspect down until police arrived, at which point the police arrested the suspected car thief.
The crash occurred as police tried to initiate a traffic stop, and the suspect slammed the car into another vehicle in an attempt to escape. The woman inside the other vehicle suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
“I grabbed him and put him down,” Cn. Commins said. “He was resisting a lot, trying to run away, definitely, and so I had to, unfortunately, give him a few punches and hurt my hand a little bit — nothing major — but making sure that there was no threat, since I didn’t know if he had a gun, if he had a weapon.”
After checking the condition of the injured bystander and considering whether she needed Anointing of the Sick, he casually expressed that a priest in a city like Detroit has to be prepared to serve the community at all times.
“Just another day in the D,” the priest quipped.
Cn. Commins previously served as a priest at St. Francis de Sales Oratory in St. Louis. Further details, including a video interview of the priest, can be found here at Fox 2 News Detroit.