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In the early morning hours of May 29, cashier Brittany Florence came face-to-face with a gun pointed to her head as four men robbed the Circle K in Troy.

Brittany Florence is a Troy native, a mother and the cashier working third shift at the Circle K when the robbery occurred.

“I was coming from the back when I looked up and see four young men in ski masks, black gloves and with a gun,” she recalled. “I got on the ground, laid down flat and he had the gun pointed at me.”

Florence, who was working alone on third shift, said that the man with the gun instructed her to open the safe but when she told him that she didn’t have access to a safe, he instead told her to open the registers.

“My glasses had flown off my face and I was like, ‘I can’t see without my glasses,” so he picked them up and handed them to me,” she said. “I got up and went over there and opened the registers for them, while another boy was getting cigarettes. They grabbed the drawers out of the registers and ran out of the store.”

During the robbery, the fear of not returning home to her children struck inside Florence’s brain.

“I thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die,” she flatly said. “Even though I did everything he asked me to do, I still thought he was going to shoot me. I was terrified and the only thing I could think about was my kids. I just hoped I could make it home and that they wouldn’t wake up at seven in the morning wondering why momma hasn’t got home yet.”

Florence said she never expected to be held at gunpoint at her job in Troy.

“I’ve been there over 10 years – off and on – and yeah, people come in and steal candy or something, but no one has ever robbed the Circle K in Troy,” she said. “They got probably $100 total between the two registers and maybe 20 packs of cigarettes. Was it really worth it?”