Markell Hitchings — a 21-year-old cook for a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Florissant, Missouri — had an unsettling notion going through his mind when the restaurant was just getting underway for business Monday morning.

Hitchings told KSDK-TV his concerns were sparked after he noticed a male dressed in black.

'I was never afraid at all.'

"I thought he was a regular customer just going to the bathroom and leaving," Hitchings explained to the station.

But he recalled something else to KSDK: "I had it back in my mind that he was going to try to do something."

Turns out Hitchings' unsettling concerns were spot on.

"He came back there behind our counter, and it all started from there. At the time, he was asking my manager for money. She dropped to the floor. I told her to give him the money because I didn't want her to get hurt," Hitchings recalled to KSDK.

Employees told the station that after the robber got the cash, he ran out the front door and around to the back of the business.

Except Hitchings also was out back, KSDK said.

"He asked me for my cell phone, and I didn't give him my phone — and we got to tussling around in back by the drive-thru," Hitchings recalled to the station.

Hitchings told KSDK that he and the robber fought for several minutes as the suspect's gun flew out of his hand.

"I was screaming for help because I was losing adrenaline," Hitchings noted to the station.

Nevertheless, the courageous cook still had plenty of strength left.

"Once I had him in a chokehold, I'm on his back," Hitchings recalled to KSDK. "He grabbed rocks and tried to smash them over my head, but it didn't work."

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Soon employees at a neighboring business called 911, the station said, adding that Hitchings held down the suspect — Tamon Sleet — until police arrived and arrested him.

Police added that officers recovered a stolen firearm that was used during the robbery, as well as currency taken from the business.

Police told KSDK that Sleet tried to strangle a ride-share driver in north St. Louis County several days before the KFC robbery — and Hitchings added to the station he's grateful that he, his manager, and the ride-share driver all survived.

"It all just happened so fast. I know it was dangerous. I wouldn't advise anyone to do that. I was never afraid at all. Honestly, I thank God that it all played out the way it did," Hitchings noted to KSDK.

The station said Sleet faces multiple charges in both cases, including assault, armed criminal action, and vehicle hijacking.

KSDK said he remained jailed Thursday night on a $250,000 cash-only bond.

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Sami Zayn enters Night of Champions as a dangerous challenger with nothing to lose in the WWE triple-threat title match against Cody Rhodes and Gunther.

Of course the Hezb'Allah nazis violently protested the peace agreement further proving Israel's point.

Air Force veteran and 9/11 advocate Don Arias slams Democratic nominees with alleged ties to radical Islamic terrorism winning primary elections.

YouTuber Randy Stair threatened an online friend in a disturbing 2016 video before killing three co-workers at a Pennsylvania supermarket in 2017.

How is this not obstruction of justice? The DOJ is going to need to take action against this dangerous thug.

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WWE Night of Champions features King and Queen of the Ring finals, a steel cage match, and Cody Rhodes defending his Undisputed WWE Championship.

The war powers resolution taken up by the Senate this past week — along with the angst over it — is part of a show.

The country’s new conduct legislation correctly understands that residency is a privilege.

Republicans should not squander it.

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Imagine your doctor diagnoses you with Alzheimer’s disease, evaluates your needs and risks, and recommends a tailored treatment plan to extend your healthy years. Who should have the final say over whether you pursue that care: you, your family, and your doctor — or an insurance company that has never met you?

For most Americans, the answer is obvious. Doctors and patients should make care decisions.

If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.

Yet in many cases, insurers end up with the final say.

New polling from Market Institute and President Trump’s pollster Fabrizio Ward found that 89% of registered voters believe doctors often choose not to prescribe Alzheimer’s tests or treatments because they know insurers are unlikely to cover them and patients cannot afford to pay out of pocket.

Voters are recognizing a real trend. Alzheimer’s patients have made headlines for benefiting from new treatments, only to receive abrupt coverage denials from their insurance companies.

Treatment allowed one patient, Lori Baetz, to return to her daily routine. When coverage was pulled back, she deteriorated, even getting lost in her own neighborhood. Lori’s neurologist, Dr. Cara Leahy, wrote that her patients are repeatedly denied coverage. Similar denials are happening across the country, including in New Jersey and North Carolina, and across insurers.

Thousands of Americans find these delays and denials unjust. In fact, a shocking 41% of young Americans said the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “acceptable.” One voter from a Market Institute focus group said of insurance companies, “They just want to wear you down ... so you just give up.”

Americans’ frustration is understandable. But insurance companies are often following rules set by the federal government.

The real culprits are the behind-the-scenes government policies that encourage insurers to delay and deny coverage.

The clearest example is a Biden-era Medicare policy known as Coverage with Evidence Development.

After the Food and Drug Administration approved a new generation of Alzheimer’s therapies, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services took the unprecedented step of limiting Medicare coverage unless patients participated in government-approved studies and met additional requirements.

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Feodora Chiosea/iStock/Getty Images

That created a second layer of red tape after the FDA had already deemed the therapies safe and effective.

The decision sent a powerful signal throughout the health care system. When Medicare, the nation’s largest health care payer, treats FDA approval as insufficient, private insurers follow.

When Lori’s coverage was denied despite her positive response to treatment, the company described the therapy as “investigational/experimental,” even though the FDA had approved it. The company was following Medicare’s lead. When Medicare treats approved therapies as experimental by requiring additional paperwork and registration, insurers can cite the government’s own policy when denying coverage.

That bad policy worsens the financial and human cost of Alzheimer’s disease.

The lifetime cost of caring for a person with Alzheimer’s exceeds $400,000, with families shouldering roughly 70% of that burden through unpaid caregiving and out-of-pocket expenses.

Meanwhile, Medicare spends roughly $174 billion annually on Alzheimer’s patients, while Medicaid spends another $72 billion, much of it on long-term care. As Alzheimer’s cases double over the next few decades, those costs will continue to climb.

The good news is that treatment could help curb those mounting costs by keeping Americans independent and in the workforce longer.

According to USC Schaeffer research, providing treatment before symptoms fully emerge could add a full year of life, reduce nursing home stays by nearly two years, and lower medical spending by roughly $48,000 per patient. That means more Americans remaining independent, fewer families crushed by caregiving burdens, and more workers preserving their economic productivity.

Every patient who remains independent, stays out of a nursing home, or delays the need for full-time care represents both a human victory and an economic one.

If policymakers want fewer insurance denials, they should stop creating incentives for them.

The FDA is charged with determining whether a therapy is safe and effective. Once it does, CMS should not erect a second regulatory barrier that encourages insurers to do the same.

Until that changes, Americans will continue blaming insurance companies for behavior government policy encourages.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that if the Democratic Party is moving towards the direction of Democratic Socialists and “this obsession with Israel, with the Jew-hating, with they don’t believe in capitalism, no prisons,

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A Saudi Arabian asylum seeker activist has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering six people and injuring hundreds more at a Christmas market in Germany in 2024.

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Communism in action.

While rents are frozen, taxes, insurance, maintenance, and operating costs keep soaring. Property owners will be forced to absorb staggering losses. The result? Construction stops, investment disappears, and New York's housing shortage gets even worse. Housing costs won't fall—they'll explode. And property owners won't be able to maintain their buildings which Mamdani will then use as the excuse to seize private property.