French woman with baby beats up armed robber

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In the video, which has become a hit on French social media, a masked man is seen entering the Bocage Normand bar, at Vire in the Normandy region of northern France, brandishing a handgun.

The reaction of the manageress Nathalie Leclerc-Pelan is a lesson in “sang froid”.

She calmly puts down the baby she is holding, and starts to berate the gun-wielding thief who proffers a bag and instructs her to fill it with cash.

Instead, Leclerc-Pelan takes the bag and uses it to beat him round the head, while pushing the gun – which was fully loaded – away from her and her customers.

The robber beat a retreat and one customer helps push him out with a bar stool. According to local media, two shots (one is clearly visible going off in the video) are fired during the foiled robbery.

Astonishingly, once Leclerc-Pelan had called the police, the robber came back to the bar in a more humble state of mind.

“I think he recognised the gravity of what he had done and thought he would get away with it if he came back and apologised,” she told regional daily Ouest-France. The man was subsequently arrested.

Leclerc-Pelan said she acted on pure instinct when the gunman entered her bar: “I thought it was a joke. He told me to fill the bag and I told him simply that I wouldn’t do it.”

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