DYNAMITE OUTRAGE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8497, 29 July 1907, Page 6

DYNAMITE OUTRAGE.

4. ROBBERY IN WELLINGTON

Indications that there were in Wellington some dangerous men skilled in house-breaking were given lately by several robberies which have taken place. But even the best informed in criminal circles little imagined that a more desperate class of criminal was at large. On Friday evening at the fruit market of Messrs Laery and Co., in Allen Street-—a quiet, remote thoroughfare in the business part of the town rear the Te Aro Railway Station—a large safe was dynamited and as far as can be ascertained, about £4O in cash removed. The company, says the Post, has its head oflices at the premises in question which are of two stories and situated alongside the stove works of Messrs S. Luke and Sons. The offices are upstairs, and in order to reach them the burglars scaled the roof of the adjoining morks,broke a pane of glass out of the upper j window sash, and pressed back the lock. This gave them access to a store, but in order to reach the offices in the front of the store they had to overcome another obstacle in the shape of a locked door. There is evidence that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to shove the door in. The efforts, however in this direction were not very great, for the thieves changed their plan of operations by placing some cases and sacks against the door, forcing in a fan-light over the doorway and gaining access to the offices through the opening. The mischief was discovered on Saturday morning by the head storeman and Mr Mitchell, one of the managing directors. There was not the usual sacking and carpeting and so on applied by thieves to deaden the sound of blasting; the operators had simply worked as though they were blasting in the open. The desks surrounding the safe were spattered with fragments from the explosion, dust was about one-sixteenth of an inch deep on the flat surfaces in the offices, and an electric light lamp was broken; otherwise the office was just as it had been left on Friday night. The safe was a large double-door one, described by an expert as one of the standard makes. To force it open some very high explosive was dropped into the keyhole, a fuse applied to it, and then packed round with putty. The explosion shattered the bolt, bending steel plates and tearing steel rivets in an amazing manner. The lock, according to a locksmith, was specially designed to resist picking and bursting, and was so arranged that the parts when locked formed almost a solid piece of mechanism, with few crevices into which an explosive could bo inserted. What he termed as "a dead hard steel plate" formed the front of the lock. This had been inserted to prevent the lock being drilled, but even that had been blown in. Souvenirs of the visit were left in the shape of yards of fuse, caps and other material. Mr W. Brown, manager for, the firm, told a Post reporter that the cash had been abstracted from boxes in the safe. The firm always banked twice a day, and usually by three o'clock in the afternoon it had very little money about premises. The amount in the safe on Friday night would have been very much less had it not been for a youth who takes money for cash sales. He retained his box (containing £25) for some time, and eventually sent it up to the office. From the main office the thieves went into Mr Brown's office, evidently in further search of money. They prized open his desk, "went through'' the drawers, but got little satisfaction there. In one of the compartments Mr Brown had several bottles of wine, and on an adjoining counter many boxes of cigars. But the intruders were not after those luxuries. They took a few cigars, but left the wine alone. The detectives are investigating the case.