Bank robbers thanked staff

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 4

Bank robbers thanked staff

Before two armed, heavily disguised robbers left the Bank of New Zealand at Lumsden with 5106,722, one man told the staff lying face down on the floor. “Thank, you for your co-operation, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr Justice Roper and a jury were told in the High Court yesterday. The trial of Alistair John Barr, aged 32, on a charge of aggravated robbery ended its second day yesterday. Barr has pleaded not guilty to robbing Lewis Graeme Steele of 5106,722 while armed with a revolver at Lumsden on March 17, 1983. Messrs G. S. Noble and R. H. Ibbotson, appear for the

Crown and Mr D. C. Fitzgibbon and Miss L. 0. Smith, for Barr.

Lewis Graeme Steele, a relieving bank manager of Dunedin, said that he was employed by the Bank of New Zealand. He began duties at Lumsden on March 14 last year. Early on the morning of March 17, he was seated in his office when he heard a disturbance in the public area of the bank. At first it was just a general noise and he was not able to pick up any of the words spoken.

The first word he heard specifically was “hold-up” and then the word “freeze” was used repeatedly and then he heard the order: “Everyone on the floor.” The commands were accompanied by bad language.

“My initial reaction when I heard this disturbance was that a person was having a joke with the staff. It was not until I heard the bad language that I became aware that it was serious,” Mr Steele said. Before he could leave the office a person burst in through the door from the public area. He was wearing a full-face motor-cycle

helmet which concealed his face.

The intruder was wearing a light blue jacket, light coloured trousers. In his left hand was a Bank of New Zealand cash bag and in the right a chrome revolver.

“He waved the revolver in my general direction and said: ‘Out.’ The revolver was similar to the .32 calibre -Hopkins and Allan revolver of the type kept in banks a few years ago,” Mr Steele said.

After walking out of his office, he saw two of the staff lying on the floor in the working area and there was a person standing at the counter with a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun. Mr Steele said that he got down on the floor as ordered. The man with the revolver went into the strongroom and opened the outside door of the main safe.

The man with the shotgun seemed to be giving most of the orders. He ordered Miss Sharyn Smith to open the safe. She could not open it because she did not have a key.

When the person with the shotgun demanded to know who had the key, Mr Steele

said it was in his office. The Eirson with the revolver eked his foot as he lay on the floor. He got up and the man followed him into his office.

After taking the keys from his top drawer, he went into the strongroom, again followed by the person with the revolver. His first intention was to open the top of the three drawers because it had the least money in it.

That man was wearing a dark crash helmet, but not the full-face type. He had on a dark jacket or duffle coat and darkish trousers.

The man with the shotgun was agitated and rather abusive. Judging by his speech and the dark colour of his skin, he appeared to be of Maori origin. He considered the man with the revolver to be . a European.

Because the robbers demanded large notes he realised that there could not be sufficient cash there to satisfy them so he opened the bottom cupboard. He was then ordered from the strongroom, by the man with the revolver.

The man with the shotgun demanded that he get on the

floor face down and while he was getting down the man ordered him to throw him the keys, which he did. That man shouted his demands and got rather excited when there was some delay in getting the safe open. The person with the revolver picked up a grey metal rubbish container and Mr Steele presumed that he took it into the strongroom to put cash into it. The man told Sharyn Smith to go in with him. When she came out she was ordered to lie on top of witness. They were both face down and she was forced to lie at right angles across him.

The man with the shotgun was doing most of the talking and he kept urging everyone to keep their foreheads on the floor and kept making threats to shoot anyone who moved. The next thing he could recall was hearing a general movement and then a voice said: “Thank for your co-operation, ladies and gentlemen.” He was not sure who made the remark but thought it was the one with the shotgun. The staff were warned not to move and to count up

to 10. On hearing the bang of the outside door they all got up, and then heard a motor-cycle start. The robbers were in the bank for about eight minutes. Later in the day he helped the bank’s auditor check the amount of money which was missing. About 5104,000 had been taken from the bottom drawer in the strongroom and 52300 from the two tellers’ drawers behind the counter. To Miss Smith, Mr Steele said that it was 11.05 a.m. when he first heard the disturbance in the bank. The person with the revolver was not easily heard because his voice was muffled by the helmet. He was quiet and confident, while the other man was excited. Asked if the man with the revolver had a well modulated voice, Mr Steele replied that he was never quite sure what that word meant.

Miss Smith: Was he well spoken as opposed to someone who speaks in a common fashion? — I would class it as an average voice. He wasn’t Eton educated and he wasn’t straight off the turnips; between those two.