London - It was a stick-up, but not as we know it - as a blundering robber tried to hold up a hotel with a twig.
Paul Lawman, 37, vaulted the counter of a Premier Inn brandishing a plastic bag with a stick inside, which he had shaped to look like a gun, and shouted at the 23-year-old receptionist: “Give me the money!”
The terrified woman called for help from her manager, who grappled with Lawman even though he believed he was armed with a gun.
During the struggle on the night of October 20, the plastic bag containing the twig ripped and Lawman’s not-so-deadly weapon was revealed.
Although the robber fled the hotel at Heald Green, Stockport, on a bicycle, the stick was his undoing as his fingerprints were found on it when he left it behind.
Lawman, from Wythenshawe, Manchester, has 96 previous convictions for offences including robbery and car theft.
He admitted attempted robbery and possessing an imitation fireman at the city’s crown court and was jailed for four years.
Daily Mail