UNKNOWN

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6992, 19 August 1929, Page 3

UNKNOWN

Masked Man With Gun A desperate bandit, armed and mask 1 cd and wearing rubber gloves, carried out a daring raid on a garage at Rozelle, Sydney, by night last week. After bailing up the manager and two assistants, and rifling the cash register of £35, the man decamped. Exciting incidents then occurred; two shots were fired by the bandit, who felled the manager with a blow on the side of the head. He made his escape in a motorcar without lights and without a num-ber-plate, and driven by an accomplice. Detectives arc convinced that the man was the robber who, on July 22, bailed up employees at a bakery at Annandale, and stole £2S in cash and cheques worth £77. .The manager, Mr Henry Weale, and his two assistants, Morgan Hall and Robert Richards, were conversing in the small office of the garage at about 7.30 when they were rather amused to see a man, whom they believed to be a practical joker, appear at the open doorway. The stranger had a handkerchief tied round his face, covering his features below tho eyes, and a slouch hat was pulled tightly down over his forehead. A revolver with a 12-inch barrel was levelled steadily at them. “Hands Up or I Shoot.’’ The man was heavily built aud wearing a grey suit, spoke swifty and in a deep voice. “Hands up or X shoot!’’ he commenced. “Come on, quick—Hands above your heads and into that corner . . . Faces to the wall.’’ “Cut out the wild west stuff,’’ remarked the youngest of the three, Robert Richards. “Quick now, into that corner, or by the man’s desperate reply. “He soon made us realise that he was in earnest,’’ said Hall later in the night. “I saw his finger tremble on the trigger. Shat was enough. We backed iuto the corner, raised our hands above our heads and turned with our faces to the wall.’’ The menaced men had sly glances over their shoulders and they saw the bandit change his revolver from his right hand to his left hand, still keeping it levelled at them. With his right hand, gloved so as to prevent tell-tale finger-prints, he pressed one of the register keys, and when the cash-drawer shot out ho snatched the bank-notes from the receptacle and stuffed them hurriedly into his pocket. At this moment, just as he had completed his crime, a motorist drew his machine up in front of tho garage. The bandit was unperturbed. “Goodnight, gentlemen,” he said to the three men standing in the corner, and then turned and ran away. Weale, tho manager, with the other two at Lis heels, attempted to follow, and the man turned about, and with an oath, fired a shot. The bullet smashed through the plate-glass window above their heads. The robber then ran up a steep street nearby, but Weale continued tho pursuit, and again the fugitive turned and fired. “Take that,” ho cried hoarsely. Weale, however, crouching low, continued the pursuit, and as they approached the corner of Hornsey street an 4 Gordon street he got close enough to attempt to trip the robber. Failing to accomplish this, he then tried to jump on to the man’s back. The fugitive'turned and aimed a heavy blow at his pursuer, striking him on the side of the head, and knocking turn down. He plunged his hand into his pocket as if to draw the revolver and shi'ot ike prostrate manager, but turned again a.nd ran to a motor-car standing a few yards down the street with its engine running and a door wide open. The machine had neither head-lights nor tail-light alight, and was without a number-plate. As the bandit sprang into a seat, the engine was accelerated with a roar «nd the car raced into the larkness. Police Without Clue. Detectives from headquarters and plain-clothcsmen. from the Balmain division wero soon on tho spot. They scoured the -district in motor-ears, but were unable to obtain a single useful clue to the identity of the bandit. The man’s audacity was amazing. The garage, which is opposite tho White Bay power station, fronts a busy thoroughfare, with motor-cars, trains, and buses usually passing in procession at tho time of night he selected. Customers, too, arc usually numerous at that hour, but the robber snatched a sufficient interval to succeed in his crime. The size of the revolver which he carried led to the suspicion in the first instance that it was tho deadly sawnoff shot-gun, but an examination of the damage caused by the bullet as it shattered the window, tore through a light wooden partition and became embedded in a wall, proved that it was a revolver of a heavy and dangerous pattern.