One patron at a bar in St. Louis was completely unimpressed by an armed robber who burst in and began waving a gun around. Instead of panicking, Tony Tovar decided to light up a cigarette moments after facing down the barrel of the man's "heavily modified pistol."
The incident began on Monday when a gunman entered the Behrmann's Tavern in St. Louis and demanded that customers and staff get on the ground and give up their cell phones and cash, KSDK reported.
Surveillance footage showed several other people fleeing the gunman, or hiding, except for Tovar, who remained in his seat at the bar while the suspected robber pressed a gun against his arm.
"I said not another punk trying to pull a punk move," Tovar told KSDK. "I’m so tired of people in South City thinking they can control people because they wanna muscle their way in with firearms or attitudes or some sort of aggression."
The suspect attempted to grab Tovar's cellphone out of his hand, but the unflappable man resisted, holding onto his phone until the gunman eventually gave up. Tovar can be seen in the surveillance video calmly putting his phone back down on the bar and as the thief made his way to the cash register, Tovar took the opportunity to light up a cigarette.
"I wasn't really concerned. I just had a really good feeling he wasn't out to harm anybody, he just wanted drug money," Tovar said.
So far, the suspect has not been identified by St. Louis Police, but an incident report showed the thief made off with people's property along with the money he took from the bar's cash register. All told, he only got away with a few hundred dollars.
No injuries were reported in the incident.