“SMASH AND GRAB”

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22992, 8 September 1944, Page 6

“SMASH AND GRAB”

A Christchurch Raid (N.Z.P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 7. With a constable in close pursuit, two youths who carried out a daring “smash-and-grab” raid on a jeweller’s shop about 10.30 last night owed their escape to a strategem that must have been planned in advance. While one kept watch the other stuck a sheet of paper smeared with treacle on the window of Mr J. H. Petersen’s jewellery shop and smashed the glass. This glass was of linusual thickness, about three-eighths of an inch, and the crash of its breaking was heard by a constable. As he rushed along, the thieves scooped up from the shelves in the window a number of diamond rings and fled. The constable was close behind them, but they had shrewdly laid a bicycle down and he fell sprawling over it. By the time he had picked himself up the thieves had got out into High Street, where they mingled with the crowd coming out of a nearby picture theatre. Mr Petersen said he would be unable to say until he had taken stock what his loss was, though it would be heavy as a number of valuable diamond rings were snatched.