HIGH-SPEED PURSUITS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27273, 27 December 1949, Page 5

HIGH-SPEED PURSUITS

SAFE ROBBERS APPREHENDED CHASE THROUGH SYDNEY STREETS Rec. 9 p.m. MELBOURNE, Dec. 26 Three men, alleged to have been concerned in a £3OOO safe robbery, were caught after police cars touched 90 miles an hour in a successful attempt to head them off. A guest at Cowes Guest House, Port Phillip Bay, was awakened early on Christmas morning by sounds which proved to be made by men loading a safe on a trailer behind a car. A telephone call caused police cars to converge at high speed on the main road. When they sighted their pursuers, the men in the car disconnected the trailer and made a bid to escape but were stopped by three shots, two of which hit the car. The safe was found unopened, though 12 attempts had been made to blow it open. A Sydney message says a policeman leaning from a patrol car fired six shots at a speeding truck while pursuing it at 80 miles an hour through heavy traffic near Sydney University on Christmas Eve. The police had chased the truck at high speed for 15 miles from the suburb of Granville along Parramatta road towards the city; The chase began when a patrolling police car noticed a truck, earlier reported stolen. When forced to the kerb the truck turned down a side street and doubled back towards the city The patrol car radioed for assistance and raced after the truck. Another police car and a motor cycle joined in the chase. In Parramatta road, near the city, the drivers of six motor cars drove their vehicles on to the footpath in or der to avoid the onrushmg truck, while hundreds of pedestrians scrambled for cover. One police bullet nicked the ear of a tram conductor. Police cars closed on the truck at full speed, one of them scraping its side as the stolen vehic e swerved around a tramway signal box and crashed fnto a ditch. The Police arrested two young men, one of whom is suffering from concussion.