CLEVER RUSE

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 31 July 1924, Page 5

CLEVER RUSE

A BANK ROBBED. £SOO TAKEN. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. MELBOURNE, July 30. By a clever ruse the Canterbury branch of the Commercial Bank was robbed of £SOO in single and fivepound notes. When he arrived in the morning, the manager (Mr. Morgan) found the telephone out of order, and a few minutes later a neighbouring shopkeeper tokl him he was wanted by the head office on the shop telephone. When Morgan left to go to the ’.phone, the teller (W. Ohittick) entered the bank and was confronted by an armed man, who told him not to move or he would be shot. The intruder then snatched the bank revolver from the wall and grabbed a handful of notes from the draw. Chittick rushed for another revolver in the manager’s room, and as he secured it the robber closed with him. Chittiek fired a shot but missed, and the man replied with two shots, wounding Chittick in the foot and hand. The thief then escaped through the back door. The robbery was evidently carefully planned, as the bank telephone wires were cut and the manager found when he went to the shop that he was not wanted on the telephone, an accomplice having apparently rung him to decoy him from the bank, while the other must have obtained entrance to tho bank in the early hours of the morning-