This is a fairly run-of-the-mill sounding robbery story, aside from one detail.
Surveillance video from the hotel shows a man wearing a shirt around his face and a University of Alabama sock hat enter the hotel with a gun and go behind the front desk.
The clerk shows the suspect to the other side of the desk before throwing money onto the counter.
While the suspect is gathering the money, he can be seen putting his gun down on the counter.
The clerk then grabs the gun and points it at the suspect, who runs off.
The suspect then came back into the hotel to try and retrieve his gun. The clerk pointed the gun at him again, and he ran away again.
First of all, why would you put your gun down? Come on, man. But more importantly, how did you expect to get it back? Unless you’ve got another gun handy that you’re not going to put down, what possible alternative outcome could there be?
Here’s that surveillance video. It’s silent, but if you watch the first video in the article I linked above you’ll get a pretty good play-by-play from the reporter. Unlike the snip, she makes it sound like him putting the gun down was an accident. I don’t know whether it was or it wasn’t, but my second point stands regardless.