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GREENSBORO - When two armed robbers entered the Wachovia Bank at 3608 High Point Road Monday, one of their first acts was to hit a male customer, standing near the door, in the head.

But they forgot about him and he slipped out the door - and waited for them to come out.

"My dad always taught me there's right and there's wrong," said the man who police are hailing as a hero for calling 911 and tailing the suspects' car.

The News & Record agreed not to identify the man because he fears retribution.

"These guys were doing the wrong thing," he said in an interview Wednesday afternoon. " 'They're going to hurt someone:' That's all I thought about."

While the two suspects were inside the bank, the 35-year-old Greensboro resident went to his car and called 911.

As the suspects left the bank, he followed them, giving turn-by-turn information to a 911 operator.

"I thought laying down on the floor and letting them get away with it and letting them leave would have been wrong," he said.

His call set into motion a series of events that led to a chase north on Holden Road, a wreck on Patterson Street near Business I-40 and a shoot-out in which one officer was hurt, one suspect was killed and the second shot and injured.

"Somebody's dead and an officer's in the hospital, but these guys were not doing the right thing," he said, reflecting on why he did what he did. "Next time it could be a lot worse."

The 911 operator repeatedly told the man not to put himself in danger. At one point, he tells the operator the robbers hit him in the head. She offers him an ambulance but he declined it.

The man followed the fleeing robbers to a nearby apartment complex, where he told the operator the men were switching from a Ford Taurus to an Infiniti sedan.

When officers tried to stop the Infiniti, the vehicle sped off.

"If I would have got hurt, it would have been bad for me and it would have been bad for my family, but it still would have been right," the man said.

Police Chief Tim Bellamy on Tuesday called the 911 caller a hero for helping police.

Dimarkchrisy Eddie Majors , 22 , who died early Tuesday at Moses Cone Hospital , and Christopher O'Neal Patterson , 23 , are suspected of being involved in several recent armed robberies including a High Point bank robbery where a gun was fired inside the bank.

But the man, who was in the bank to have a document notarized, declines any laurels, giving credit for heroism instead to police, including those not involved in Monday's gunfight.

"Police officers do this stuff every day," the man said.

"I got whacked upside the head and I followed them .... Getting up in the morning and knowing it could happen, that makes you a hero," he said.

"Doing what I did just puts you in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Contact Sonja Elmquist at 373-7090 or sonja.elmquist@news-record.com