APSE & DOWNS: Pastor Michael Jankowski (right) caught Brian Cook (left) allegedly robbing Lamb’s Chapel in Long Island. (
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Our Father, who art a crime fighter!
A Long Island pastor called on the power of the Lord to help him subdue a would-be thief whom he caught red-handed in his Center Moriches church — then prayed over the pinned thug.
Pastor Michael Jankowski, 49, was stunned to find Brian Cook, 43, allegedly rummaging through an office desk early Thursday morning inside Lamb’s Chapel.
The 6-foot-1, 250-pound Jankowski, who is in the midst of a weeklong fast, dialed 911 on his cellphone and then dropped the device before tackling Cook.
“I’m not sure if the police are coming or not, so I just started to tell him we loved him and God loved him,” Jankowski told Newsday. “I said there was a different way to live. He didn’t have to live this way — that there was hope for him. And he was crying and shouting that he wanted to die. I prayed over him — loud. I had a captive audience.”
Cook, of East Setauket, was charged with third-degree burglary and was being held at the Suffolk County Jail.
It’s the second such burglary in two months at the Frowein Road church, but police have not connected the two crimes, in which a glass door was smashed and the church offices were ransacked.
Jankowski said his congregation prayed for the person who first broke into the church.
“We knew that to break into a church, you’re pretty much hitting bottom,” he said.
Jankowski discovered the latest incident just before 6 a.m. on Thursday, when he arrived to get ready for a prayer session. He told Newsday he heard a noise in an office and went to check it out.
“I turned on the light, and he was sitting right there,” Jankowski told the paper Friday.
“He was rifling through the desk, and the place was completely trashed. He had a black coat on, black hoodie and ski mask. All I could see was his eyes — and black leather gloves. He jumped up and screamed. I screamed, because it startled both of us.”
The padre managed to snag Cook as he bolted for the exit, and hold onto him while shouting to a 911 operator via the speakerphone on his cell, Jankowski said.
“I feel that whatever time he serves he can get help and come out a different man, and it’s a home run for everybody,” he told the paper.
Cook was being held on $5,000 bail.