Octogenarian amputee crowns bank robber

Press, 9 November 1988, Page 8

Octogenarian amputee crowns bank robber

PA Auckland An octogenarian amputee, Ted Smith, yesterday broke a milk bottle across the head of a knife-wielding bank robber. The robber did not even flinch as Mr Smith struck him during the robbery of an Auckland Savings Bank branch in Mount Roskill. “I had to get this chap one way or another,” the pensioner said. “I don’t like to see people getting away with these sorts of things.” The robber, who entered the bank about 1 p.m., held three tellers and several customers at knifepoint. Mr Smith had withdrawn money and was about to buy a bottle of milk at a dairy.

“I looked at my milk bottle and I looked at this chap. I thought to myself, ‘I have to get him’.” As the tellers lay face downward on the floor, and the other customers “froze,” Mr Smith hit the robber as he stood at the counter stuffing money into a bag. Mr Smith, who will celebrate his eightyseventh birthday today, and has an artificial leg, said, “I took a big swing, and got him clean behind the head. “The bottle broke into a million pieces, but he didn’t go down. “He must have had a thick skull cap on.” The hefty robber threw Mr Smith across the room. “I thought it was all over then. He just stood

over me with this huge knife ready to stick it through me. “He said to me, ‘Look, old man, never try anything like that with me.’ I just sat there. I was scared.” Mr Smith, after being treated for shock at Green Lane Hospital, said if he had the chance to show his bravery again, he would not do so. “I was a bloody fool doing what I did,” he said. “Mind you, if I had had a beer bottle it might have been a different story ...” Detective Inspector Noel Plumer, of the Auckland police, said the robber escaped with between $lO,OOO and $15,000. The offender, described as a male Polynesian, was still at large late last evening.