A man in DeLand, Florida, held up a store there in a crime that police described as one of the most bizarre that they have ever seen. His weapon of choice? A palm frond.

Police there say that the man, identified as Gelando Olivieri, attempted to rob the V&F Discount Beverage store by threatening harm with a spiked Spanish bayonet, a palmetto-like plant with sharp points on its leaves.

“The man came in with the branch. I have never seen anything like this,” owner Goutam Sarkar told the DeLand-Deltona Beacon, a newspaper there, June 19.

Surveillance video showed Olivieri wildly waving the palm frond right in front of a worker’s face.

According to investigators, Olivieri threatened to use the leaves to stab if he wasn’t given $50.

“(The plant) was sharp,” Sarkar said.

Before Olivieri got any money, he was chased out of the store by a man armed with a barstool.

Olivieri was arrested a short time after the crime and charged with armed robbery. (Maybe that should be “palmed robbery”.)

A police official said that the leaves of the Spanish bayonet are like knives and that people often plant them under windows to stop people from breaking in.