BURGLAR AT BANK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 18 July 1924, Page 5

BURGLAR AT BANK

A WAIMATE SENSATION

CASHIER FIRES A SHOT

A NELSONIAN’S EXPERIENCE

(United Preea Association.)

WAIMATE, This Dav

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 safe at the Criterion Hotel between 3 and 4 o'clock this morning. Some time after 3 o’clock the wife of the hotel licensee, Mrs D. Coffey, heard a bottle crash in tho private' bar.• She endeavoured towake 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 9 o’clock she found that £l2 in silver was. missing from the safe. Only coppers had been. left. The safe had locked up again.

About 4 o clock Mr Forbes White, cashier at the Bank of New South Wales, who sleeps on the premises, heard a sound in the back yard. Opening the bedroom window Jie saw an indistinct figure in the faint moonlight standing just in the back door of the manager’s room, which opens into the . yard, and •which is almost directly beneath him. Ho fired down, but missed, and the man sprinted down the yard and through a high board fence, locking the gate after 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 the police, but the burglar had made a getaway.’ -

The work at the Bank goes to show that the burglar-was a coot and experienced hand. He had entered from a window, then opened the back door in readiness for a sudden ’flight. He had obtained Mr White’s keys without disturbing the latter, but these were useless without the manager’s keys. The' occurrence at the hotel supports tho assumption of the previous licensee, Mi’S Stenhouse (whose safe was twice fobbed, on the latter occasion being relocked) that' the thief is possessed of a key. I; ’ [Mr White (whose parents live in Nelson) joined the stall of the Bank at Nelson, and was in the local branch" for some years. He returned from service a,fc Fiji at the end of last year, and had since been stationed at Waimate.j