Rebecca Peterson appeared in Lincoln County court this week. She gave up her right to a preliminary hearing within ten days, and her lawyer requested a competency evaluation. A psychologist will, at some point in the next few weeks, sit across from her and try to determine whether she understood what she was doing on the morning of May 1.
The filing landed while the clip was still being made into a punchline
The video of Peterson at the Alum Creek Shell station has been circulating across X, Reddit, and political-meme accounts for almost a week. Brandon Tatum, the former Tucson police officer turned conservative commentator, reposted it to his national audience. EndWokeness picked it up next. Gateway Pundit called the back-room moment a “Jedi mind trick.” The framing locked in fast: a stupid woman, a brilliant clerk, a punchline. By the next morning the clip was being shared by accounts that don’t usually run gas station robbery footage. The competency motion is now sitting in the docket while the captions on the clip get funnier.
What actually happened was quieter
Peterson walked into the Shell station on Little Coal River Road at 4 a.m. on May 1 and told the cashier she was robbing the store and to alert the owner. She repeated it. The camera caught all of it. She pulled a handgun and identified herself, by name, before firing a shot into the wall.
The shift wasn’t supposed to be his
Alaa Hammad was covering for a friend. The Shell station in Lincoln County is the kind of place where the overnight rush is a couple of truckers and the morning crew arrives around five. Hammad told her to lower the weapon. She fired into the wall behind him instead. His voice on the surveillance footage is three short syllables, the kind of thing a person says when they have already started doing the math on what comes next. The woman holding the gun had, by that point, given him her full name.
He told her the owner was in the back counting money
The owner was not in the back. There was no owner. Hammad made it up on the spot, the only thing he could think of. Peterson believed him and walked toward the rear of the store with the gun still in her hand, looking for a man who didn’t exist. The moment her back was to the counter, Hammad ran. He hit the front door, made it to the parking lot, and called 911 from outside while a second shot went off behind him. The bullet hit the security camera mounted to the back wall. The $250 camera went dark.
Peterson drove off north on Route 119 in a black SUV. Troopers stopped her in Kanawha County a short time later and recovered the gun. She was charged with attempted armed robbery, wanton endangerment, brandishing, assault, and destruction of property, and booked into the Western Regional Jail.
The man with the gun pointed at his head told a different version
Hammad sat for an interview with WCHS after his shift ended. He didn’t call her stupid. He didn’t take a victory lap. “I tried to let her be calm and saw her mentality is not awake,” he said. He had read it in real time, while the gun was still in her hand, and he had not changed his mind by the time the local camera turned on him. The defense filing, in its own way, agrees with him.
The clip is still moving. New accounts pick it up daily. The captions are getting funnier, the comment sections meaner, the dunks more confident. None of them mention the court date. The man who was in the room, the only one whose life was actually on the line, has not posted about it once. He answered the local reporter’s questions, finished his shift somewhere else, and went home.
The owner Peterson was told would be in the back room counting money has not spoken publicly. He was never there. The lie that saved Hammad’s life is the one detail of the story the internet has not made into a meme.