"Panic", it's what happens when you realize you just made a simple mistake that could cost you thousands of dollars.
It's hard to "do the right thing" when your up to your a$$ in alligators trying to drain the swamp and facing a dead line. In this case the 'gators were all over him.
Doesn't justify the way it went down, just throwing out some mitigating circumstances. Hopefully several of us learned some hard lessons here.