HOLD-UP AT AUCKLAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 6, 6 December 1930, Page 6

HOLD-UP AT AUCKLAND.

WOMAN SHOPKEEPER ROBBED. AUCKLAND, Dec. 5. Presenting a revolver at a woman behind a counter, a man who entered a fruit and confectionery shop at 53 Park Road, Grafton, at 11 o’clock last night, staged a dramatic holdup, and after snatching ten £1 notes from the woman’s hand vanished into the night before her screams of terror could summon assistance.

The whole incident occupied a few minutes only. The proprietress of the shop, Airs C. Edser, who was alone at the time, was called to the shop from her sitting-room by a man who asked for half-a-erown’s worth of the best chocolates. The sweets had been placed in a bag, when the man asked Mrs Edser if she could change a £lO note.

“I made the remark; ‘You are lucky to have a £lO note, aren’t .you ?’ and went to my private till to see if I had sufficient change,” said Airs Edser in narrating the incident. “I came back to the counter with ten single notes in my hand, when the man suddenly pointed a revolver at me. He said: ‘Say one word and I will shoot you.’ I screamed out for help and he grabbed the notes from my hand and dashed out of the shop. “Some neighbours who rushed in thought they heard a man starting a motor-cycle as he made his getaway.” Airs Edser says that the man was cleanshaven and appeared to be about 35 years of age. He was wearing an old-fashioned type of gabardine raincoat and made no attempt to conceal his features.