Student facetiming his girlfriend catches armed robbery on camera

[A Texas student was brutally assaulted in his room, all while his girlfriend watched helplessly via FaceTime nearly two hundred miles away. Photo: Baylee Luciani via KXAN]

A Texas college student’s routine video chat with his girlfriend took a frightening turn when armed robbers suddenly burst into his room and began assaulting him.

Austin Community College student Yale Gerstein, 19, was talking to his girlfriend on FaceTime when he heard an unusual sound coming from outside his door and decided to investigate.

That’s the moment three men suddenly charged inside and started beating him with their pistols, all while his girlfriend watched helplessly nearly two hundred miles away in Dallas, Texas.

Gerstein’s girlfriend, Baylee Luciani, initially thought he was playing some sort of practical joke on her, but soon realized the gravity of the situation she was witnessing on camera.

“I was scared because they were saying, ‘I’m going to blow your head off, I’m going to kill you,’ ” she told KXAN. “I’m like wow … seriously watching an armed robbery happen to somebody that I care about.”

[Photo: Baylee Luciani via KXAN]

That’s when she told her father to call 911, while she began taking screenshots as evidence. She captured images of the robbers holding a pistol to Gerstein’s head and looking directly into the camera.

“You are looking down a barrel of a gun hoping that you don’t see a bullet,” said Gerstein, describing the incident to KXAN. “Just don’t get shot, just don’t get shot … that was on my mind.”

The thieves, who still remain at large, eventually made off with thousands of dollars in musical equipment.

There was one specific item that Gerstein lost in the robbery that he says hurts the most.

“I had just finished my first album that I was working on as a solo artist,” he said. “That’s all lost in someone’s possession who doesn’t even know what they’re holding.”