Arrest After Robbery With Violence At Lonely Hotel

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31385, 2 June 1967, Page 1

Arrest After Robbery With Violence At Lonely Hotel

A special squad of detectives and a large number of policemen were still searching last night for men who broke into the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Teddington, at 1.15 ajn. yesterday, attacked a 70-year-old man and his two sisters, aged about 65, threatened to kill them, and forced them to give up between £3OO and £4OO in cash and a number of cheques.

About 7.30 p-m. yesterday detectives arrested a 30-year-old man on charges of burglary and aggravated robbery. They are still looking for two men.

The man assaulted, Mr J. Kennedy, was hit on the head and face with a torch while he lay in bed in darkness at ‘the hotel. Mr Kennedy suffered a broken hose, cuts, and abrasions. Mr Kennedy is the brother of the owner of the hotel, Mrs M. E. Packer, and Mrs J. MacReynolds, who were assaulted by the three robbers and forced to show where the money was. Neither Mr Kennedy nor his sisters needed hospital treatment. The robbers broke into the isolated hotel through a back window and turned the power off at the switchboard. Mrs Packer said that she and her sister heard a terrible noise coming from their brother’s bedroom. They could not turn the light on. CALLED POLICE

“My sister was wonderful," Mrs Packer said. “She found the telephone after crawling round in pitch darkness and dialled 111 for the police.”

Mrs Macßeynolds went from the room she shared with her sister and saw a man leave her brother’s room and run down the stairs. Mr Kennedy’s face and head were covered with blood. The two sisters got him into their room and tried to lock the door.

“The lock didn't seem to work. My sister and I tried to hold the door shut, but the three fellows just charged in, knocking us down,” Mrs MacReynolds said. The sisters said that the three men, with handkerchiefs over their faces, demanded money. They wanted to know where the safe was, but were told there was none. Mrs -Packer, who had just

sold the hotel after 35 years in it said the men apparently thought the money from the sale was in the hotel. She

told them it was in the bank, and invited them to take liquor. The men pushed the sisters out of the way, threatened to “do them in,” and took cash and cheques in bank bags that Mrs Packer had in her room. CAR KEPT GOING ..The telephone had been cut off when wrenched by the robbers. However, the Lyttelton police, alerted by Mrs MacReynolds’s emergency call, had just established a check point on the road between Governor’s Bay and Teddington when a car went through it Police took the number of the car. About £l3 in cash was found in the hotel yard by the police, and later in the day ■ detectives found cheques 1 stolen from the hotel on the i Gobble’s Pass road. The police have the car ’ which went through the check ’ point, at the Central Police ' Station. They took the owner ’ and two of his friends to the 1 station for -questioning. The ' men said that the car had 1 been lent to another man on i Wednesday evening. After ' the men's explanation had ! been checked, they left the police station.

It was the third theft with violence in Christchurch in the last five weeks. Five men were arrested by the police and charged in the Magistrate’s Court after a man had been attacked in a cafe and money taken after staff had been threatened. Three men stole several hundred pounds from a New Brighton restaurant after they accosted the proprietress in bed in a flat above the restaurant and threatened her with violence if she did not show them where the money was. The police have made no arrests in the restaurant robbery.