Drug charges bonus to robbery inquiry

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33774, 21 February 1975, Page 14

Drug charges bonus to robbery inquiry

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, February 20.

Detectives investigating an armed robbery in Remuera today—in which two women were threatened with a sawn-off shotgun and one was tied up—unwittingly stumbled on an alleged drug network.

By the end of one of the biggest and most successful police operations in Auckland for a long time, two men had been arrested on a charge of aggravated robbery, and a further man and two women had been arrested on drug charges.

A man carrying a sawn-off shotgun forced his way into a Remuera house this afternoon and tied up two women before fleeing with a quantity of drugs and electrical equipment from the house.

Later, two men — one! aged 24, the other 21 — were arrested and charged with the aggravated robbery of one of the women.

I Only a short time afterSwards both women from the house, and the husband of [one of them, were themselves arrested. The husband and wife have been charged with possessing a narcotic, and the other woman with offering to sell a narcotic. The incident began shortly before 3 p.m., when one of two women living in a Waiatarua Road address, Remuera, answered a knock, on the 'door. A man allegedly levelled a shotgun at her, 'forced her back into the house, and tied her up. Ambulance As she was lying, bound, on a bed, she heard another! ’man enter the house. Shortly

after that, a further woman occupant of the house arrived home.

Detective Inspector P. M. Faulkner, said later the bound woman was forced at gunpoint to call her friend into the bedroom. When the friend entered she was forced at gunpoint to sit quietly.

As soon as the two men left the house, the second woman called the police, and patrol cars throughout Auckland were alerted to watch out for an old ambulance or hearse. A 'special radio communications centre was set up and extra patrols were called in and placed at strategic I points around the eastern part of Auckland.

As the intensity of the search grew, reported sightings of a vehicle like the one being sought began to come in.

Finally, about 4 p.m., an old ambulance was intercepted near the Green Lane roundabout on the Southern Motorway. The vehicle was forced to stop near the Commercial Travellers’ Club premises in Ohinerau Street, Green Lane. Two occupants of the vehicle were apprehended by the police, including armed officers, and were taken to the central police station. Later they were

arrested and charged with the aggravated robbery of the first woman in the house. Mr Faulkner said the police had taken possession of a sawn-off shotgun. The robbery was the fifth armed hold-up in the country within the last 10 days. On February 11 two men held up the Casebrook Post Office, Christchurch, and stole about $800; two days later a masked man armed with a rifle robbed the tellers of a Christchurch Canterbury Savings Bank branch of nearly $3OOO (tow men have been detained); and in Auckland, on Monday, staff at a city photographic store and a suburban clothing store were robbed at gunpoint. Three youths have been charged in connection with these incidents, and a fourth on a burglary charge.