A petrified security worker has described how he managed to survive after being held hostage at gunpoint during a £80,000 raid.
The cash-in-transit deliveryman was trapped alone in a shop in Newton Heath, Manchester, with robber Ashley Hodson, 38, who threatened to kill him.
He said he did what he had to do to stay alive during the terrifying ordeal.
The guard, whose anonymity has been protected, has spoken of what he went through in an interview to highlight the work police are doing to stop such robberies.
He was just about to reload an ATM when he was ambushed, the ManchesterEveningNews reports.
The thief didn't just want the money - he wanted the worker, too.
"We'd pulled up to our third to last drop of the day," he said.
"I looked to my left...there were a guy there, just stood with a gun to my head, demanding that I give him the money.
"I had to reply 'in order to get into the box I need to get into the safe', so he said 'hurry up'. So I radioed through to my colleague who at the time didn't know what was going on, to give me the code so I could get into the safe.
"Then he demanded that I give him all the other cassettes that were in the safe as well. At that point the shopkeeper actually managed to get out of the shop....locking me in the shop with the gunman."
"He put the shutter down and left me in there. So obviously that intensified the gunman's attitude and body language to the point of him saying to me 'listen if you don't get him to come back and open this door, I'm going to shoot you' and constantly waving the gun in my face and towards me."
Hodson told the guard, 'come here, you're my hostage now', but he refused to be cowed, telling him, 'no I'm not'.
The victim has since returned to work. But he will be mentally scarred for life, with a court hearing last month being told that he 'thought his death sentence had been signed' as Hodson tried to steal over £80,000.
Recalling being trapped in the shop, the guard said: "So, I'm on my radio trying to get the shopkeeper to come back to unlock the door. My colleague kept saying, 'oh I can't, he's gone off. He's hiding 'round the corner".
"Eventually, the gunman handed the guard a hammer and told him to start using it to lever up the shutters. "
At that point I'm thinking to myself, 'do I use this hammer to try and disarm him and make myself as safe as possible?'" the guard said.
"I looked at Hodson and he said 'listen mate, I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to get out of here.' He started to come down a bit, not as agitated. I started talking to him and said the police were on their way and that if they found him with a gun he'd be looking at five years."
The guard persuaded Hodson to throw the gun under shelves and urged him to surrender.
"At that point I started thinking I've taken control of this situation, now he's no longer the one in control. I said 'the best thing for you to do now is lie down to reduce the chances of being shot when the police come in'.
"Before he could do so, the shopkeeper opened up the shutter and the police came in."
The guard instinctively raised his hands in the air as officers stormed in and they asked him if Hodson had a gun.
He said: "I ended up just sort of pointing... I don't think the realisation of that actually dawned on me from the minute the shutter went down I was actually a hostage.
"I just sort of dealt with the situation presented to me."
Hodson, who smirked in his police mugshot, has now been jailed for six years for the robbery, which occurred just after 4pm on March 23.
Justin Hayhoe, prosecuting, told the court last month that Hodson entered the shop shortly after the cash deliveryman and immediately became aggressive, saying "open the f***ing box and give me the money".
Brendan O'Leary, defending Hodson, said that he has been showing 'genuine remorse' for what he did and has since been diagnosed with complex PTSD by a psychiatrist.
He said he may have been in a 'high state of stress' at this time as the offence came on the anniversary of his brother's murder and the offence may have been a 'cry for help'.
However, Judge Nicholas Dean KC said the most likely reason for the offence was he 'had a drug debt, was given a gun and told to get the money'.
Hodson from Newton Heath, pleaded guilty to robbery and possession of an imitation firearm.
Sentencing him to six years in prison, Judge Dean KC said: "You undertook the robbery of a small shop. You used an imitation gun, but he was not to know that."
Cash in transit robberies are decreasing in frequency.
Holding up cash in transit vehicles or guards collecting from and filling cash machines was once a staple offence for organised crime gangs, but is increasingly seen as 'old school', police believe.
But the attraction remains for some - high risk but potentially a quick return of huge amounts of cash.
In 2021 there were 49 cash and valuables in transit attacks across the UK and £1.6m was stolen.
