ATTACK & RETREAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1938, Page 6

ATTACK & RETREAT

BURGLARS RAID KING EDWARD BARRACKS STOLEN MOTOR-VAN DRIVEN INSIDE POLICE CORDON SET JUST TOO LATE (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. A gang of burglars with big ideas set out.in the early hours of Monday morning on a well-planned endeavour to help themselves to a van-load of military stores from the King Edward Barracks, but, going about the job a little too noisily, they very narrowly escaped capture by a police cordon. • Their plan involved two “breaks.” First they went to J. M. Heywood and Company’s garage in Sydenham, where, using a jemmy, they broke their way through outer gates and inner doors and, selecting a large covered van, drove it away, and arrived at the Montreal Street entrance of the barracks at 3 a.m. The cut a padlock off the outer gate with a powerful boltcutter, and drove the stolen van into the yard. They then shut the gate behind them. The marauders then forced open a small door, which admitted them to the main building. Here their first move was, in view of subsequent developments, a brilliant one. They padlocked on the inside two other doors opening into the building. It seems probable that they also posted one of their number under the balcony of the caretaker’s quarters. Along each side of the main buildings are the offices of various units and store-rooms packed with tinned food, rifles and ammunition, blankets and camping gear, and other military equipment. They were not sure, it seems, which store to □pen first and as they moved from one door to another the caretaker, Mr L. Haslett, heard them. Hoping to give the police the opportunity of a redhanded capture, he quietly rang the watch house, and within a minute or two a dozen policemen had arrived, blocking every exit. They found themselves locked out, however, by the padlocks so shrewdly used by the burglars except at the door by which the latter had entered, but the marauders had taken the alarm. Probably the listener under the balcony of the caretaker’s quarters had heard him ringing the police station, and the burglars tripped out. Heywood’s van was left in the yard, and the police found also burglars’ tools, two jemmies and a boltcutter, the latter being regarded as an important clue. Nothing had been taken from the stores.