Four charged after £6k raid on post office

FOUR men suspected of being involved in a post office burglary were stopped by police in Burscough.

Officers from Lancashire Constabulary were called to reports of a burglary at the branch in Walton-le-Dale at 4.50pm on Saturday.

After stealing around £6,000 in cash, four men fled the scene in a car.

An Audi was spotted moments later on the A59 in Burscough and was stopped by police.

Four suspects in the car were arrested at the scene on suspicion of burglary and taken into custody for questioning.

Detectives have since confirmed that four men from Liverpool have been charged in connection with the raid. Lee Browne, 34, of Brodie Avenue, Haneef Chowdhury, 24, of Woolton Road, Peter Neary, 38, of Barnsbury Road, and Warren Benjamin, 23, of no fixed abode, have all since been charged with burglary.

The four men appeared in Preston Magistrates’ Court yesterday, on Monday, May 9.

Chief Superintendent Wendy Bower, of the TacOps team, shared the information about the incident as an example of the crimes her team dealt with over the weekend.

Posting about the bust on Lancashire Police’s Facebook page, she said: “Over the weekend we experienced high demand on the service, with a high volume of calls in to the 999 and 101 operators.

“The incidents above are just a small number of the total incidents attended by the TacOps team over the weekend - and of course an even smaller number of the incidents dealt with across the force as a whole.

“However these incidents illustrate the excellent work our officers do, and show that no matter how busy we are, good, proactive work is always going on to tackle the issues that matter most to our communities.

“As always, we would urge anybody with concerns about crime in their community to report it to us on 101 or online at doitonline.lancashire. police.uk.