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Inspiring Stranger Stops Street Fight Filmed by Teens on Cellphones, Schools Kids

On Monday night, a yet another video of a street fight captured the internet’s attention.
Image: Two young men shake hands after man mediates a fight
In a still from a video that went viral on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, two young men shake hands after a man mediates a fight in Atlantic City, New Jersey.Marmar Duval via Facebook

Yet another video of a street fight has captured the internet’s attention.

This time, however, it wasn't the flying fists, but the bravery and wisdom shown by a bystander who stepped in to mediate the situation that made the video take off online beginning Monday night.

In the video, two young men are seen brawling in the middle of a street in Atlantic City, N.J., as their peers hit record on their phones and egg on the action.

But before things get too rough, a man approaches and shames the group. “Everybody on your phones though, all y'all, y'all the real cowards. Record that too,” the man says.

On his way home after running errands for his mother, it was Ibn Ali Miller who was the man who pulled over from driving after seeing the group watch the two boys quarrel. He recognized the boys and girls from the neighborhood, and he says they recognized him.

“All these kids in Atlantic City, they’re my kids,” Miller, 26, told NBC News. “I take it personally,” he said over the phone from Atlantic City.

Miller spoke to the two teens and the gaggle of kids standing around them in a powerful exchange and diffused the situation. And here’s a recap of how it unfolded:

Miller stops the action and the young men explain why they're fighting — an apparent misunderstanding between the two.

"The only reason I'm saying this to all of y'all is because y'all are almost men," Miller says.

As the onlookers continue to laugh, Miller brings his attention back to the crowd. He says if the teens lived in the area where they were fighting, they were living good and they shouldn’t make their parents look bad.

Recognizing one of the teens, he reminds them of the hard work their parents endured to get to where they are. To another, he notes that the young man’s father is serving a life sentence in prison.

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Miller insists on brokering a truce between the two young men. "If ya’ll don’t shake hands bruh, I’m not leaving," Miller says.

Though hesitant at first, both young men eventually shake hands and walk away without any bruises.

Miller who’s studying at Masjid Muhammad of Atlantic City Inc. says it was a hadith, a Quranic saying from the Prophet Mohammad, which propelled him to step out and speak up: “The strong is not the one who overcomes the people by his strength, but the strong is the one who controls himself while in anger.”

He didn’t anticipate the two boys deciding not to fight and shake hands, but was glad they did.

“There’s a butterfly effect,” he reasoned. “If you have a fight and lose the lesson -- that condemns you for life.”

“When you’re in your adolescence, whoever is on the losing end of that fight, and the video gets widespread, then that can hurt someone’s confidence in life,” he told NBC News.

One of the teens in the fight, Jamar Mobley, told NBC Philadelphia, "The one thing he said that got through to me was that, he explained to all my friends, who I thought were my friends, all of them just wanted to see a fight."

With more than 28 million views on Facebook at the time of this article, Miller's words resonated well beyond the Atlantic City street corner.

NBA champion Lebron James reacted on Twitter, stating "So dope!!! #Salute the homie who stepped in and spoke real to our young generation. We all need a word or 2 to help!”

The video has garnered more than 63,000 comments on Mobley's Facebook page.

"This is awesome. Looks like a movie or something," Christopher Ikechukwu Okonkwo said. "If most would do same when they see stuffs like this, there would be less violence in the system."

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