Man badly hurt in robbery

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 1

Man badly hurt in robbery

PA Auckland A man shopping with his family was critically wounded in the stomach, and the baby daughter he was cradling peppered with buckshot, when three masked robbers burst into a South Auckland post office last evening. A shotgun blast was fired at Mangere Bridge about 7.30 p.m. seconds after the armed robbers crashed through the post office doors.

Opposite the post office, staff at a stereo equipment shop rushed to a window to hear a woman screaming, “There’s blood, there’s blood.”

Details were sketchy late last evening, but it seemed that only a few people were inside the post office. The injured man was apparently standing with his wife, holding his daughter, when the robbers, all wearing overalls and balaclavas, struck.

The police said a shotgun

was turned on the man and fired. The shot struck him in his right side. The baby’s grandfather, Mr Jim Terangi, told a reporter at Middlemore Hospital lat evening that the child was lucky. “He (the infant’s father) must have thrown her away when they shot him,” he said.

Mr Terangi said the shot could have killed the baby. A few pellets hit the child’s stomach, causing minor injuries.

Mrs Vicky Rhind, one of two tellers on duty at the post office, said she was completing a balance sheet at the rear of the office when 'she heard a noise like a car backfiring, accompanied by the smashing of glass.

Mrs Rhind thought someone was fighting at the counter. She said she then saw a masked man behind the counter and heard screaming.

She made for the post-

mater’s office, intending to dial the emergency 111 number, but decided against it because of the possible threat to other people’s lives.

Then a hooded man appeared in front of her, brandishing a sawn-off shotgun and ordered her to open the safe.

“I got the keys off the counter and told him there wasn’t much money, as it was a small post office and we don’t carry much cash,” said Mrs Rhind.

“He said: ‘Bitch, you had better open it — and hurry

up.’ “They asked where the back door was. I didn’t look at them too much. I thought I was going to get shot.”

The man with the shotgun grabbed her by the hair and Iragged her out to the back jf the post office to the safe. The police last evening ivere trying to establish how much money had been taken.