Man accused of trying to rob store, then calling mom for ride

Just because the town is called "Niceville" doesn’t mean they’ll patiently wait for your mom to pick you up after you tried to rob the local convenience store.

The Sun-Sentinel reports that 22-year-old Zachariah Dalton Howard is charged with attempting to rob a Thumbs-Up Convenience store in the Florida town (home of the Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival), when he told the clerk he had a gun. But he left the store without any cash after the clerk showed him the empty store register.
Howard then walked over to a nearby Winn-Dixie store where he called his mom and asked for a ride home, the report says.
You can read a full copy of the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office report here (PDF).
According to the report, Howard told police that he initially left his mom’s home to “let off some steam” and didn’t set out to rob the Thumbs-Up but “came up with the idea while walking there.” As authorities deemed Howard did not in fact bring a gun into the store, he was formally charged with “attempted robbery without a weapon.”