More people involved in robbery?

Press, 9 January 1986, Page 2

More people involved in robbery?

Nelson reporter The Nelson police are not discounting the possibility that more than one person was involved in the $36,000 armed robbery of the Richmond branch of the Westpac bank on Monday. The head of the Nelson C. 1.8., Detective Sergeant Roy Powell, said yesterday the man had calmly sat on his parked motor-cycle in Cambridge Street, Richmond, for some time before entering the bank. After the robbery his route out of the town took him into Oxford Street, Wensley Road and past the Richmond cemetery where he dropped about $lOOO. This was later handed in to the police by a motorist. Wensley Road intersects with the Aniseed Valley Road which winds over the hills into the valley. It is a non-exit road and the only road access into the valley. Detective Powell said that reported sightings of the man and the motorcycle led the police to search the valley but without success. There are many places in the valley where a motorcycle could have been dumped and if this had occurred the robber could have left the valley in another vehicle. It was possible, therefore, that a second person could have been involved, he said. The police know the

motor-cycle was of the trail bike variety and painted black. Mr Paul Swift, a motorcycle dealer in Nelson, who knows the Aniseed Valley well, said yesterday that to his knowledge the only route a trail bike could use to get out of the valley would exit near the Brook Street motor camp. Mr Craig MacMorland, of the Yamaha distributors in Nelson, said that if the machine was in its original black paint it could be only one of four models. He had been told of a Yamaha DT2SO that had been seen in Nelson about two weeks ago. This was not one of the four models and appeared to have been spray painted. The robber was described by Detective Powell as European, about I.Bm tall and in his 20s, “very athletic.” “He’d need to be able to place one hand on the counter and leap over while still carrying a rifle, and wearing gloves,” said Detective Powell. He wore a full-face black crash helmet, a khaki scarf round his mouth and nose and brown-tinted sunglasses. He was dressed in a heavy, Army-style greatcoat, faded blue jeans and dirty white sandshoes. The stolen money comprised mainly $5O, $2O and $lO notes, said Detective Powell.