What I mean is that if no victim was present there couldn't have been the violence or threat of violence necessary to turn the theft/larceny into robbery:[0]

> Robbery, in turn, was simply a "compound" form of larceny. For Blackstone, "compound larciny is such as has all the properties of former, but is accompanied with one of, or both, the aggravations of a taking from one's house or person," id. at *240, and "[l]arciny from the person is either privately stealing; or by open and violent assault, which is usually called robbery,"

I'm not really making a judgement about the rights and wrongs of the actual case (because I'm not only not a lawyer, but also not a witness, juror, etc.), but as described it doesn't sound like robbery at all.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060903163713/http://docket.med...