Winter Garden Police

Engineers delight in putting pens in their shirt pockets.

For gas station clerks, however, the location of your cell phone in your shirt pocket could save your life.

This seemed to be the case at a Winter Garden, Fla., Hess gas station, which was subject to a holdup.

As WFTV reports it, a man walked in, demanded the safe be opened, and brandished a gun. Two clerks tried to open the safe, but failed. The robber took off, but not before turning and firing at one of the clerks.

As WESH-TV reports, when the police arrived, one of the clerks complained of chest pain. A touch of angina? No, a bullet to his HTC.

The cell phone had been in the clerk's shirt pocket, and it seems to have saved his life, according to Lt. Scott Allen of the Winter Garden Police Department, who was interviewed on WESH-TV.

The police department released images of the severely damaged phone.

The clerk, who has not been named, went to the hospital but was given the all-clear. The suspect, whose actions were recorded on surveillance video, is still at large.

"In my career, I've seen low-caliber handguns do quite a bit of damage to someone, sometimes more than a high-caliber handgun. So he's very lucky," Allen told WESH-TV.

It might seem flippant to suggest that HTC phones are especially well made. However, a couple of years ago, a valet at an Atlanta nightclub was also shot in the cell phone, strategically placed in his jacket's chest pocket.

It was said, at the time, that the phone's battery took the bullet. The phone? It was an HTC too.