Kevin Holland is making a habit of heroism.
On Monday evening, Holland was eating at Ra Sushi in the Highland Village area of Houston when a man entered the restaurant, pulled out a gun, and opened fire. Then man was the taken down and subdued by multiple individuals inside the restaurant, including Holland.
Speaking on Wednesday’s episode of The MMA Hour, Holland recounted the entire incident and the role he played in apprehending the shooter.
“We’re at the sushi spot, we’re chilling, having a good time,” Holland said. “I’ve got my uncle with me. ... There was a party behind us, a birthday party. So when I heard the bang originally, I’m like, ‘That’s a champagne bottle.’ I’m thinking my people back here are having a good time. So I turned to look behind me and people are running, glass is breaking. OK, that’s not a champagne bottle, that’s a gunshot.
“I see the people that are in front of me are down low. My uncle’s getting up like he’s about to run. I pull him down by the shirt, like, ‘Yo, chill.’ I look to the side and there’s kind of like an island there, and on the side the guy is holding the guy with the gun, and the gun is pointed directly towards the back of the spot where we’re sitting at — so I’m like, ‘OK, that guy’s safe but we’re not.’ So instead of going around the right side of the bar, I go around the left side of the bar, and there’s a long island in between there. So as I’m running down, I pick up a chair and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna use this chair, this chair’s gonna come in handy.’
“I grab the chair and hit the corner. At this time, they’re still wrestling and the guys are kind of spaced out, the shooter is getting back into the motion. But the guy still has a good grip on the gun and he’s holding the hammer — that’s probably the best thing he did, is hold the hammer. So I get over there, I’m trying to make out who the two guys are, so I put down the chair, because I don’t want to hit the wrong person with the chair. I realize who the shooter is and help pry the gun out. First, we aimed the gun down because I was like, ‘This is probably a better situation instead of pointing towards the back,’ but as we’re aiming down I’m like, ‘We’re upstairs, what if somebody is downstairs?’
“So I aimed it towards the island and then up top. At this point in time, I noticed the guy’s wrist start to jam up a little bit, so I punched the wrist, pulled the f****** back, put him in a rear-naked choke, sit him in the lap, I choked him, my uncle’s sitting there ... he’s watching and he’s like, ‘He’s not out, he’s not out!’ Then he grabbed the guy’s arm and, ‘He’s limp, limp. Alright, he’s out!’
“I roll over, get on top, throw the backpack out, the guy wakes to and I’m holding him by the back of the head and let him know, ‘If you move again, I’m about to smack you. I’m gonna hit you really hard. You might want to just chill out.’ He’s like, ‘Yes, sir.’ ... Next thing you know, officer comes in, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m about to get off.’ He’s like, ‘No, you’re about to help me flip him.’ We flip him, he hit him with the cuffs and off he went. ... It was a good night. Nobody got hurt, everybody went home safe.”
This is now the second time in the past six months that Holland has intervened to prevent a crime. In October, Holland chased down and subdued an alleged carjacker in Saginaw, TX. And having had the experience of stopping a crime before, Holland had a great amount of respect for the first man to confront the shooter, saying that he’d like to find out who the man was so he can reward him with some fight tickets.
“I want to find the first person that jumped in there and originally grabbed the guy to slow down the shooting,” Holland said. “I’d like to find that guy, and the next time they have some fights in Houston, whether it needs to come out of my own pocket or whatever, I’d like to give that man and his old lady some tickets to watch some UFC fights, whether it be me fighting there or whether it just be him showing up to some fights. So if we can find that guy, we can get that guy some tickets to a fight, I think that’d be lovely.”
It’d be a nice gesture in appreciation for the courageous act of the unnamed person.
Unfortunately, Holland did not receive any similar show of thanks from the restaurant.
“I ain’t gonna lie, Ra should’ve covered my bill,” Holland said, laughing. “I still ended up having to spend $200 with y’all. Yeah, Ra — next time, they better cover my bill. Ra was tripping. I understand they were going through some stuff but Ra was tripping.”
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