If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a friend complain about a phone with a shattered screen, I’d be the known as That Girl With Lots Of Nickels. But perhaps just this one time a phone owner is likely grateful to his broken phone for doing him a tiny favor and stopping a bullet.

Police in Winter Garden, Fla. tell the Associated Press that the whole thing went down in the wee hours of Monday morning, when a man walked into a gas station and asked the clerk for help.

But instead of needing assistance, cops say the man showed the worker a gun and told him to open the safe. The clerk couldn’t it open, and neither could a second worker who also tried to acquiesce to the robber’s demands.

Ostensibly angry at being foiled, police say the suspect fired a shot at one of the clerks before fleeing — but the bullet hit the worker’s cellphone instead of going into his body.

Shattered screen or shot up body? Not a tough choice.

*This story originally incorrectly identified the phone as an iPhone. Possibly because MBQ is just used to seeing her friends’ iPhones with shattered screens, which always prompts a lecture of “Fix your dang phone, it’s terrifying.”

Police: Clerk’s cellphone stops robber’s bullet [Associated Press]

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