Trauma in town
2005-05-19
TRAUMA counsellors were called in to support shop assistants who were held at gunpoint in a jewellery store in Paarl on Monday.
Galaxy Jewellers has no security doors or surveillance camera which could deter the five men who walked into the Lady Grey Street store.
After a man posing as a client had used his cellphone, the four other
robbers rushed into the store.
They scaled the counters and pointed firearms at the manager and her two assistants.
The terrified women were bound and forced to an office, where they were locked in.
The robbers emptied the safe and grabbed valuable jewellery, mostly gold wedding sets, chains and bracelets, from the display cabinets.
The suspects have been described as having very dark complexions. They spoke English, but understood Afrikaans, and had definitely been in the store a fortnight ago, the assistants remembered.
Within an hour after the robbery police apprehended a new-model green VW Golf with tinted windows, as shoppers had described the getaway vehicle.
The driver was detained for questioning but he (and the car) was later ruled out as suspect. He had been running an errand for a Paarl school teacher, the owner of the car, when he was arrested.
More witnesses have now come forward and the police are investigating the possibility that the robbers hail from the Peninsula.
Meanwhile the shop assistants life in fear.
"When a deliverman arrived at the door (on Wednesday), we went in shock. We don't know whether we can continue working without a safety gate," they said.
* In another armed robbery, four men posing as businessmen, held up a trucking company in Paarl South last week.
The spokesman for the four was dressed in a suit and tie. While negotiating the hiring of a truck to Johannesburg, one of the men suddenly put a firearm to the assistant’s head.
When the men found no money on Rautenbach Transport’s premises, they robbed the staff of their cellphones, jewellery and cash.
The robbers escaped in a blue VW Jetta.
Insp Auckland Losper and Const Maria Fouché (807-4000) are the investigators.
More
News
|
