Video captures heart-pounding moment armed thugs ambush wealthy investor

Stunning surveillance footage shows the heart-pounding moment armed thugs ambushed a wealthy Texas investor in his driveway during a brazen botched robbery.

Mark Gardner, 73, had just pulled up to his $1.1 million Dallas home in his BMW when three would-be thieves jumped out and surrounded the vehicle around 1 p.m. Tuesday, ABC affiliate WFAA-TV News reported.

A terrified Gardner told his stepson, a passenger in the car, to call his wife inside the house — then called cops as the gun-toting trio banged on the windows with their weapons.

“Never did I think something like this would happen,” he told the outlet. “This is where they took the butt of the gun and kept pounding it, ‘Give it up! Give it up!’

“I said, ‘Call your mother right away and tell her to go hide in the house! I’m calling the police,’” he recalled.

The gutsy Gardner said he startled one of the thugs by pounding on the car window, then sped away after about 15 seconds, leaving the armed trio in the dust in his driveway.

The wannabe thieves high-tailed it before police arrived and remain on the loose — but Gardner says he hopes the trio appreciates that they dodged a bullet.

“Maybe they think they’re invincible,” he told WFAA. “But if they think they’re that tough, wait ’til they get to prison.”

Cops said the crooks followed Gardner home from the bank and jumped out to rob him once he arrived at home — a practice police call “jugging.”

Gardner and his family were shaken but not hurt.