Doctor’s Worst Nightmare: Forced on Wild Spending Spree After Brooklyn Show

A har­row­ing kid­nap­ping ordeal turned into a bizarre shop­ping bonan­za, accord­ing to reports of a doc­tor alleged­ly held hostage after a Brook­lyn music event. 

Oph­thal­mol­o­gist Michael Bautista claims an armed man iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as “Tony G’s” forced him on a twist­ed odyssey through the Bronx that ran up over $6,000 in purchases.

Police sources say 42-year-old sus­pect Antho­ny Ben­jamin threat­ened Bautista with vio­lence if he resist­ed join­ing the day-long spend­ing fren­zy. Stops includ­ed piz­za, smooth­ies, a strip club, bar­ber­shop vis­its and trips to Foot Lock­er that rang up four-fig­ure bills. Through­out it all, Ben­jamin alleged­ly flashed what Bautista believed was a con­cealed weapon, keep­ing him in a state of ter­ri­fied compliance.

As the expen­di­tures mount­ed, so did Ben­jam­in’s aggres­sive behav­ior. He omi­nous­ly warned the doc­tor about putting peo­ple “in body bags” and not being afraid to “let bul­lets fly,” accord­ing to reports. Fear­ing for his safe­ty, Bautista played along until reach­ing his hos­pi­tal, where secu­ri­ty helped end the har­row­ing ordeal.

It remains unclear what moti­vat­ed the brazen abduc­tion and finan­cial coer­cion. How­ev­er, the saga under­scores safe­ty con­cerns around the Brook­lyn Mirage venue, from which two oth­er men recent­ly van­ished before dying. For the trau­ma­tized doc­tor, it was a shop­ping trip from hell that thank­ful­ly came to a peace­ful con­clu­sion — though the trau­ma undoubt­ed­ly lingers. An inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing seek­ing jus­tice in this dis­turb­ing case.