Road Bandits Daylight Haul

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 11

Road Bandits Daylight Haul

Faked Breakdown Decoys Clerk In full view of passers-by in Lordship Lane, Tottenham, N., one afternoon, four motor bandits ambushed a young London County Council cashier, overpowered him and made off with £250 in notes which he was taking to the bank. The cashier, James Baines, 25, of I Spottons Avenue, Tottenham, prevented the bandits from taking another £250, and made a gallant effort to stop the men, but he received a stunning blow. The ambush was ingeniously planned. The offices of the White Hart L.C.C. housing estate, at which Baines is employed, are at the corner of Tower Cardens and Watheof Avenue. Here the tenants bring their rent during the first three days of each week, it being Baines’s duty to cycle with tie money to the bank at Wood Green. Usuallv be carries about £SOO. Obviously knowing this, two of the bandits, with a five-seater Ford car, staged a realistic, breakdown in Lordship Lane, near Watheof Avenue, one of them sitting at the wheel and the other poring over the engine with a spanner. The other two bandits completed the ambush on the pavement 100yds. further down the road. Carrying the money in an ordinary attache-case, Baines unsuspectingly cycled right into the middle of the trap. As he did so one of the men on the pavement shouted. “Here he comes,” and signalled to the occupants of the Ford car. The car sprang into motion and, bearing down on Baines, edged him into the kerb. One of the men in the car leaned out, and, giving him a push, sent him sprawling at the feet of their confederates on the pavement. The attache base flew open. Baines grabbed one bundle of notes, and one of the bandits the other. Then, as Baines staggered to his feet, the other bandit—a burly man in a blue suit—bit him a crashing blow in the '.mouth, sending him on to the pavement again. Both men quickly leaped into the waiting car, which drove off at a. furious speed in the direction of Wood Green. The whole thing was over within five seconds. A* grocer’s van which was passing at the time gave chase, but lost the bandits’ car in a traffic block near Wood Green.