What happened
On 21 February 2013 Michael Whybrow, 59, was working alone at the Murco petrol station on Brookfield Road in South Ashford, Kent. At 4.50am Anna Chambers, 29, walked in with her face covered by a scarf. Whybrow asked her to take it off. She produced an eight-inch kitchen knife, said “Give me the money!” and tried to climb over the counter, thrusting with the blade.
He refused to hand over the cash. He pressed the panic button under the desk, which also locked both doors, and dialled 999, leaving the phone off the hook so the call-taker could hear. She smashed a bottle of wine and tried again to reach the till. Over the half hour before police arrived he tried to take the knife from her, and the blade cut four fingers of his right hand. When she saw the bleeding she fetched kitchen roll. Police brought her to the floor.
The outcome
Chambers admitted attempted robbery and possessing a knife at Canterbury Crown Court. Judge James O’Mahony jailed her for six years and compared the CCTV to the horror film Don’t Look Now. “Anyone seeing the CCTV couldn’t fail to notice the terror on your victim’s face when he saw you with that horrible weapon,” he said.
Whybrow was given a High Sheriff of Kent bravery award and a £300 thank-you.
What went wrong
The sources describe no failure of the employer’s systems, and this page does not invent one. The garage had a working panic button, working door locks and a phone, and Whybrow had the training to use all three.
What the case shows is the shape of the exposure. One man, alone, in a shop open to the street at 4.50am, with a knife in front of him and no colleague to call. Chambers’ barrister said she was drunk and “out of control”.
The controls bought time. They did not shorten it. The half hour is the finding.
What it teaches
Three controls worked together, and none would have been enough alone. The button locked the doors, so she could not leave and come back with others. The phone stayed off the hook, so the call-taker heard the incident without him describing it. The counter kept a barrier between them.
Rehearsal is what made that possible. He knew where the button was, what it did, and that 999 could be left open. A lone retail worker reading a procedure during an armed robbery has none of that.
The gap is the response. If nobody knows how long help will take, the worker is alone for that period, whatever the technology promises. Ask what the response time is for your site, and what you are meant to do until it arrives.
Questions for the room
- Could you reach the panic button, the door lock and the phone at once, and have you rehearsed it?
- What is the expected police response to your alarm, and what are you meant to do until it comes?
- Whybrow refused to hand over cash and then went for the knife. Which of those would your procedure support?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed, on the record’s mark. Both sources, Kent Online and the Mirror, were read in full and agree on the key facts; the CCTV detail comes from Kent Online. The sequence here is Whybrow’s own account as reported, not an independent reconstruction. Neither source gives a policy, a risk assessment or an alarm specification for the garage, so this page describes the controls he used and not the system behind them.
Our lone working training covers the alarm, the doorway and the minutes before help arrives.
Sources
- Kent Online · Hero cashier stands ground in face of would-be robber’s knife terror · 2013
- Mirror · Watch brave grandad fend off knife robber at garage · 2013
Reviewed 20 October 2026.