An armed robber tried to act cool and was caught in a hotel in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, in north-central Ecuador.
Surveillance footage from the July 7 attempted robbery showed one of the attackers speaking to the front desk employee as he was about to draw his gun.
The frightened employee slowly began to raise his hands when a police patrol suddenly stopped at the hotel entrance before his accomplice could alert him.
The cunning suspect suddenly slid the gun through the window slot as part of an attempt to appear as if he were a guest.
A policeman did not fall into the trap, burst inside and ordered him to lie on the ground.
A suspect (right) and his accomplice were arrested while attempting to rob a hotel in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Ecuador, on July 7.
The robber tried to act calmly as if he were a customer when the police stormed the hotel.
The officer then kicked the gunman to the ground, and his partner came in to provide reinforcements.
Meanwhile, the other police officers remained at the entrance securing the second suspect before escorting him inside the hotel.
Crime statistics released by Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office on Monday showed that 32,699 reports of theft were registered across the country in the first six months of 2024.
In total, 98,484 robberies were reported last year.
A second suspect is escorted into a hotel lobby after police in Ecuador foil a robbery attempt
Data shows that during the first six months of this year there were 3,492 home burglaries, while in 2023 there were 10,910.
Once a peaceful country, Ecuador is now suffering from an unprecedented wave of violence linked to drug trafficking.
With ports on the Pacific, the country serves as a transit point for cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru and sent to the United States and Europe.
The homicide rate in Ecuador, a country of about 17 million people, rose from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 47 per 100,000 last year.