MASKED MEN ROB BUS DEPOT

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27928, 27 March 1956, Page 3

MASKED MEN ROB BUS DEPOT

EMPLOYEE BOUND AND GAGGED SAFE CONTAINING £B5O TAKEN (New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND. March 26. Two masked men armed with big spanners early yesterday morning bound and gagged Mr Gordon Deacon, aged 43, who was on night cleaning cuty at the Auckland Bus Company’s depot at New Lynn, and made off with the safe containing the week-end takings. About £B5O is missing. Mr Deacon, of 210 Great North road. New Lynn, started work at midnight on Saturday. He was making a cup of tea in a room on the second floor about 3 a.m. when he was accosted by two big men with scarves or coloured material over the lower part of their faces.

One held a heavy spanner menacingly above his head. The men told Mr Deacon to keep quiet and lie down. He obeyed them, and the men tied his hands together behind his back. One then wrenched a length of flex from a plug and broke the other end from a small radio. With this they bound his ankles. As Mr Deacon lay face downwards, the men bound his thumbs together with adhesive tape. They then tied a necktie around his mouth.

After an hour’s struggling, Mr Deacon freed his legs, and went across the road to the home of the company’s foreman mechanic, Mr James Cuthbert. and told him what had occurred. Mr Cuthbert’s son. Constable G. D. Cuthbert, telephoned the police. It was Mr Deacon’s first experience of night duty at the depot. He had agreed to change shifts with another employee. At the time the premises were briffhtlv illuminated with neon lights.

Mr Deacon was unable to offer resistance to the men because he has double curvature of the spine—a legacy of poliomyelitis when he was