Caught on camera
Bearded raiders stealth raid on town lens shop
A furious shop owner gave professional thieves a rare chance to return £ 2,000 worth of goods nicked under his nose.
Daring daytime raiders picked a lock in a cabinet at Vennal Cameras in Ayr and casually walked out with the loot on Friday. Owner Robert Griffiths launched an amnesty plea on Facebook to the light fingered duo - promising they could walk free if they returned the Olympus lens and camera.
The gang was given a 24- hour timeline to drop off the stolen equipment with no questions asked by Monday at 5pm.
But Robert’s season of goodwill gesture was snubbed - forcing him to hand the CCTV footage of the Hope Street raid to police.
He said: “They are scumbags. They took the most expensive items in the cabinet. They definitely knew what they were doing and were not your average opportunistic Joe Blogs. I don’t think they just wandered into the shop and thought ‘ let’s do this.’ If I had got the camera and lens back - I would have said that is it by with. We wanted to give them the option to bring them back. I was so annoyed about how they did it.”
We have obtained security footage of the thieves - all brown- haired and bearded - in the hope readers can identify them.
Robert believes the pilferers were working with another man who came up to the counter and asked him “stupid questions” as a distraction. The camera recording shows him walking past the thieves afterwards and making a subtle comment to them before leaving. Then one of the shoplifters’ arms can be seen slipping into the cabinet twice at lightning speed. The theft was over within seconds. Robert believes one of the duo stuffed the equipment into his pockets. They then walked out calmly.
It took place at 4.33pm on Friday but Robert didn’t spot the missing equipment until Saturday.
It is the first ever large scale theft in the shop.
Robert, a dad, of one, added: “We are a small family- run business, and crimes such as this impact us in a far more brutal way than they would a larger company.”
It is thought they made off towards the Lorne Arcade. Anyone with information is asked to telephone the police on 101.