Armed gang 'was prepared'

2006-08-25 13:13

Johannesburg - The armed men who robbed a jewellery store in an upmarket Pretoria mall on Friday clearly knew what they were doing, said a store official.

"They'd obviously been in the shop before, they'd done their homework," said financial manager Richard Burton of Greig and Meinke in the Brooklyn Mall, in Pretoria's eastern suburbs.

He said the gang was in and out in "about 45 seconds, a minute max".

Staff were shaken but unhurt.

"There's a fair amount of confusion here. We're not going to know what happened until we look at the video footage on the CCTV cameras."

The gang arrived around 08:50, while staff were inside the shop getting ready to open up, and smashed their way into the store.

Burton said there were five to six robbers, wearing construction hats and mouth covers, apparently to protect themselves against the smoke in the store which is released when the windows are broken.

"According to other shop people they fired shots into the windows then used hammers," said Burton. The gang then smashed open the display counters.

Earlier police said more than R1m in goods had been stolen but Burton said it would take staff "most of the day" to work out what was missing. "It's anyone's guess, I can't even begin to give you an estimate."

Items left behind by the robbers had been hurriedly scooped up by staff to prevent further thefts through the broken windows.

"If we hadn't had the smoke we would have lost a lot more," said Burton.

He said five staff including a security guard were in the shop at the time. They fled from the gang, some locking themselves in the safe and one in the kitchen.

Inspector Anton Breedt said the gang fled in a silver BMW 3-series.

No other shops were targeted.

- SAPA