THIEVES’ USELESS TASK

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 46, 18 November 1929, Page 12

THIEVES’ USELESS TASK

LARGE, EMPTY SAFE TAKEN BURGLARY IN AUCKLAND SHOP Dominion Special Service. Auckland, November 16. An audacious robbery was carried out last night, when thieves broke into the grocery shop of Mr. W. J. Wilson, 108 Union Street, in the city, and carried away a safe weighing two hundred-weight and a half. The shop, of the lock-up type, is situated at the lower end of Union Street. When Mr. Wilson arrived there early this morning he found the lock of the front door had been forced off. The woodwork near the lock was badly splintered by a jemmy or other iron instrument, for marks were plainly visible. A bag of sugar, placed in a box, had been moved against the door from the Inside of the shop to keep it closed. The safe was in a storeroom at the rear of the shop under some shelves. On walking into the storeroom Mr. Wilson was surprised to find that the safe, which was three feet high and two feet six inches wide, and weighed two hundred-weight and a half, had vanished.

The back door, made of iron and heavily barred, had been opened from the inside. The door is sixteen feet up from a vacant section behind the shop. To carry the heavy safe down the flight of stairs was not an easy task for the thieves, who, no doubt, had a motor-car or cart in Union Lane at the rear of the shop in which to take the safe away. “It would take at least two men to move the safe,” said Mr. Wilson. “What the thieves will say when they cart it miles away and blow it open only to find that It contains nothing more than a few insurance papers I can only imagine,” he added. “Fortunately I did not place yesterday’s takings which were considerable, in the safe. I took them home.” The grocer said £6 worth of cigarettes and tobacco had been stolen from the shelves in the shop.