Jan. 5 (UPI) -- Authorities in Houston released security camera footage of a quick-thinking cellphone store worker locking an armed robber inside the business alone.

The video, recovered April 17 of last year at Latino Cell on the southwest side of the city, was released this week following the sentencing of the suspect, John Bell, to five years in prison.


The video shows Bell walk into the store and demand clerk Karina Leon open the cash register.

"It was in broad daylight," Leon told KHOU-TV. "I was cashing out a customer and she had a baby. I think I was handing her her cash, then this guy walks in with a hoodie on."

The video shows Leon refuse to open the register, and Bell walks into the store's office. While he is in the office, Leon ushers a customer and another worker out of the store, locking the door behind her.

"As soon as he went into the office I just immediately got out and got the customer out," Leon told KTRK-TV. "I just locked him outside because whenever you lock the door outside, from the inside you can't open it so I knew he wasn't going to be able to open it."

The video shows Bell panicking inside the store, shooting the lock four times in an unsuccessful bid to escape. At one point, he gets down on his knees to beg onlookers to let him out of the store.

"Everything that [Leon] did just worked in our favor, she locked the door, he wasn't able to get out," said Officer Jeff Brieden of the Houston Police Robbery Division.

Bell, who Leon said had previously been involved in an armed robbery at the store, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.