Brazen robbers threaten woman
‘‘You’ve got 10 seconds to tell us where the safe is,’’ a hooded man holding a hammer yelled at baker Ann MacGuire.
It was 3.30am and the head baker had been preparing for the day.
She later told her Mapua Village Bakery boss Sean Carley she had heard an ‘‘explosion’’ from the shop front on Aranui Rd.
MacGuire thought a car had hit a power pole and went toward the counter to take a look.
That’s when three men came through the shattered front door, stepping through broken glass.
She was confronted by a large hooded Maori man holding the hammer. Two others followed closely behind. They kept asking: ‘‘Where’s the safe aunty?’’. ‘‘Where’s the other people? Where’s the other baker?’’
‘‘I’m by myself, I’m by myself,’’ she replied.
The men checked the toilet, the cool room and then took her to the back of the bakery and made her lie down before putting an empty bread rack over her.
She told Carley later that she replied to the demand for the safe by saying: ‘‘Sorry sir, we don’t have a safe. We’ve only got the tills.’’
One of the offenders started pulling out drawers and tipping over bins, while the third searched the back of the premises looking for money.
As the robber with the hammer stayed with MacGuire, the other two started breaking open the tills at the front counter. They grabbed cash and even took a piggy bank with tips; money that the bakery owners were going to shout their staff with.
After the men ran off through a park, MacGuire called owners Sean and Annie Carley who immediately rang police and made their way to the shop.
MacGuire wasn’t injured, but was badly shaken by the ordeal early yesterday that lasted around 20 minutes. She was referred to a victim support worker and has a few days off to recover.
Sean Carley would normally have been helping MacGuire prepare, but had the day off.
He said the ‘‘brazen attack on such a lovely community’’ left him ‘‘gutted’’.
‘‘You just don’t expect people to just smash your door and come charging through at 3.30 in the morning and assault someone ... it’s very disheartening.’’
The men knew one of Carley’s 14 employees was inside the shop.
‘‘You’d have to know ... it’s really dark outside and we’ve got the lights on. They would have just been looking through the window.’’
Nothing like this had happened to Carley’s business before and it will take ‘‘quite a few weeks to recover’’.
‘‘We do it hard in business. We try and do the right thing by providing a great product and service and it’s just a kick in the gut, it really is.
‘‘All the staff are upset and Ann [MacGuire] is terribly upset.’’
But the incident is not going to get the Mapua Village Bakery down. Carley said now was the time they needed to support each other and the community had been generous since they shared the news.
‘‘The response from the police and the effort was incredible.’’ Already the shop doors had been replaced and a temporary till had been installed so they could get up and running again today.
Carley spent yesterday afternoon cleaning up and baking bread.
Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Johnston said although the offenders had their faces covered, all were believed to be Maori. He said at this stage it was not believed the robbery was connected to an attempted robbery at a Main Rd store in Lower Moutere on Monday afternoon.