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By Elisha Fieldstadt
He brought a knife to a knife fight — a bigger knife.
A Huntsville, Alabama, gas station clerk defended himself with a machete against a knife-wielding alleged robber and his accomplice over the weekend.
Surveillance footage released by the Huntsville Police Department showed the robber approach the window of a Conoco convenience store with a knife.
The clerk produced his own larger knife in reaction, but the thief wasn’t immediately scared off. He entered the closed-off room with the register and cigarettes that the clerk was standing in.
The two took swings at each other with their knives.
“Everyone was kung fu fighting .. that clerk was fast as lightning,” Huntsville Police Lt. Michael Johnson said in an email.
The robber finally decided he had enough and tried to leave the store, but the clerk had auto-locked the door, so the thief threw an object through the front of the store to escape, police said.
The clerk followed, and found a woman outside as the robber went back into the store to swipe money out of the cash register, which he disconnected by severing the power cord with his knife.
Meanwhile, the clerk swung at the woman outside with his knife, and then he started violently attacking the suspects’ car, cracking the windshield and windows.
The clerk told investigators that he wanted to “visibly mark the vehicle so police could easily recognize it,” Johnson said.
The alleged thieves drove off but were arrested a short time later. The suspects, Seth Holcomb, 32, and Laney Nicholson, 33, were charged with robbery, police said.
Even though there was plenty of knife-swinging during the incident, “amazingly, there were no serious injuries and no medical treatment beyond first aid needed to all parties,” Lt. Johnson said.
The 43-year-old clerk, who has not been identified, is not facing any charges, police said.
