Stop if you’ve heard this one before.
A man walks into a bar with a gun. “This is a robbery,” he tells the handful of people inside.
Most of the bar patrons don’t want any trouble. They duck under the tables and hand over their wallets when asked.
But one man is different. One man has absolute nerves of steel, and not only does he refuse to hand over his smartphone at gunpoint — he actually lights up a cigarette and watches from the bar while the robbery takes place.
Security footage shows the man’s unflappable reaction to an armed robbery in progress, which took place shortly after midnight on Aug. 28 at Behrmann’s Tavern in St. Louis, Mis. The footage does not include audio, but the man’s body language is clear: he’s not getting robbed today.
“He was just very adamant about it like, ‘I’m not playing your game,'” bartender Dustin Krueger told local station KMOV4 after the incident.
Footage released by the bar’s owner, John Kimack, shows Krueger and four men at the bar when the suspect walks in with a semi-automatic-style gun in his hands.
Two men see the gunman and immediately duck under the bar. Others, including Krueger, head to the back of the room and get under the tables.
One patron at the bar doesn’t budge. He just takes a swig from his beer and goes back to browsing his smartphone.
In the video, the suspect enters the frame and jabs the muzzle of his gun into the bar patron’s ribs, then reaches for the phone. But the bar patron refuses to hand his phone over. Instead, he tugs it out of the suspect’s hands and slaps it down on the table in front of him. He then takes out a smoke and puts the cigarette package and the phone in front of him on the bar, where the suspect can’t reach them.
The suspect goes behind the counter and starts looking for something to take while waving the gun in the patron’s direction.
The patron doesn’t seem to care. He lights up his cigarette while the gun is being waved in his face.
The suspect eventually decides to ignore the patron. Instead, he goes around to the other patrons and takes their wallets and phones. Then he brings Krueger around to open the till.
By the end of the video a second patron has emerged from under the bar and he, too, can be seen smoking during the robbery.
The suspect leaves after approximately three minutes.
“My biggest concern was for the people that were sitting there,” the bartender, Krueger, told KMOV4.
Police say five men and one women had items taken from them in the robbery. No one was injured.
The extraordinarily bold bar patron and the suspect have not been identified.
The investigation is ongoing.
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