Ain’t that a pair of kicks in the head.
The three men who cops say jumped a teenager in East Flushing, Queens, and stole the “$2,000 Air Jordans” right off his feet, found out the hard way that the sneakers were just knock-offs when they tried to sell them at a consignment shop.
Not only that, the store’s surveillance camera captured crystal-clear video of them as they tried to cash in on the faux Jordans.
Police released the footage Thursday afternoon as they continued to look for the trio.
“The real reason why we didn’t buy them — the shoe was a knockoff,” an employee at .IMAGE, who asked not to be ID’d by name, said on Thursday.
The victim had been standing on a sidewalk on Quince Avenue on Saturday when the muggers’ white sedan slowly passed him by, then pulled over.
The three ran out of the car and one grabbed the victim from behind and pulled him down to the sidewalk, holding him. The other two each grabbed hold of one sneaker and yanked it off. Then they ran back to their car and bolted.
The victim, whose name has not been released, told cops that the three men stole his “$2,000 Air Jordans.” It’s unclear if he knew they were bogus when he gave cops their value.
Just 20 minutes after the mugging, the same three guys walked into .IMAGE on Northern Boulevard, according to cops.
“They tried to sell them to us,” said another employee, who dealt with the trio at the counter. He asked to be ID’d only by his first name, David.
He had no idea the shoes were stolen. “It just seemed like a normal transaction. They didn’t stutter They just told me they wanted to sell it.
“They asked, ‘How much could I get for these?’”
David compared the offered sneakers with the real ones they had in stock.
They appeared “exactly” the same, he said, until you looked closely.
“Cheaper material,” David explained of the knock-offs. “The stitching was different.”
He told the trio, “They’re fake. We can’t buy them.”
Asked to estimate the value of the knock-offs, the first employee lowballed — a lot.
“Zero dollars, because it’s a fake!” he said.
Cops had been canvassing nearby sneaker consignment stores when they discovered the .IMAGE store surveillance video.
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano