WAIMATE SENSATION

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1073, 21 July 1924, Page 3

WAIMATE SENSATION

BURGLARS AT WORK. tf Per Press Association. AVAIMATE, July IS. A sensation was provided by an attempted robbery on the premises of the Bank of New South Wales and the successful theft of £l2 from the sale of the Criterion Hotel between three and four o’clock this morning. Some time after three o’clock the wife of tlie hotel licensee, Mrs D. Cofiey, heard a bottle crash in the private bar, and endeavoured to wake her husband, who is a heavy sleeper. Then she opened the bedroom door, but hearing no further sound, went back to bed. When the hotel was opened at nine o’clock it was found that £l2 in silver was missing from tho safe. Only coppers were left. The safe had been locked up again. About four o’clock Mr Forbes White, cashier of the Bank of New South Wales, who sleeps on the premises, heard a sound i’ the backyard. Opening his bedroom window lie saw an indistinct figure in the faint moonlight standing just by the back door of the manager’s room, which opens into the yard, and which was almost directly beneath him. Mr White fired down, but missed, and tiic man sprinted down the yard and through a high board fence, locking the gate alter him. Mr White then found that the gas had been turned off at- the meter and the telephone wires cut in the front office. A passing baker, however, called in tho police, but tho burglar had made his get-away. The work at tho hank goes to show that the burglar was a cool and experienced hand. He had entered from a window, and then opened the back door in readiness for sudden flight. He had obtained Air Wbite’s keys without disturbing the latter, but these were useless without the manager’s keys. Tho occurrence at tho hotel supports the assumption of the previous licensee, Mrs Stenhouse (whose safe was twice robbed, on latter occasion being relocked) that the thief is possessed of a key.