GIRLS AS HOSTAGES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 934, 2 December 1933, Page 23 (Supplement)

GIRLS AS HOSTAGES.

Bandits Raid Bank, Seize £BOOO and Escape. NEW YORK, November 21. j Using girls as hostages, twelve ban- • dits who had raided a bank were able to escape under the noses of the police, who were waiting for them to leave the premises. The bandits invaded the town of Racine, Wisconsin, in two motor-cars, which carried four machine-guns. In leisurely fashion they held up the American Bank and Trust Company Building, shot an interfering policeman, and carried off £BOOO. Long before the robbery was complete a big crowd gathered outside, watching developments. The robbers surveyed the situation and compelled three girl employees of the bank to walk ahead and shield them from the bullets which the police were preparing to fire at them from upstairs windows across the street. The bandits pushed the girls ahead of them through the crowd, climbed into their cars, and disappeared. One bandit, in the uniform of a policeman, sat with a machine-gun on the rear bumper bars. Forty miles away the bandits dumped their hostages overboard. They have not been captured.