Captured on CCTV: Bank robber nearly bleeds to death as he slashes arm on glass door

TWO armed bank robbers have been extradited from Spain and jailed for their roles in a gang who stole £500,000 by threatening workers with sledgehammers, crowbars and machetes .

Lee Tansey, 33, and Rickton Mark Henry, 31, managed to leave the country while wanted by police who were investigating a series of meticulously planned raids on banks in West Yorkshire and Lancashire.

But the pair were caught after they were spotted in photographs taken at a Spanish nightclub and were brought back to Britain on European arrest warrants, to be met by police at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool.

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Details of the men’s escape – after a high-speed car chase across the Pennines – were heard yesterday at Leeds Crown Court, where a judge handed down jail sentences totalling almost 20 years.

Tansey admitted robberies at two Lloyds TSB branches – one in Darwen, Lancashire, on June 5, 2008, and the other in Elland, near Halifax, on June 18, 2009.

He and Henry also pleaded guilty to the robbery of an HSBC branch in Marsh, Huddersfield, on June 26, 2009, during which a bank worker was struck on the head with a machete.

In all three raids, bank staff were threatened with weapons before the robbers took cash and made off in stolen vehicles bearing fake registration plates, which were later found abandoned and set on fire.

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Richard Walters, prosecuting, told the court that Tansey broke into the bank in Darwen by using a metal grate to smash through the glass entrance doors while children passed nearby.

Tansey cut his arm so badly on the glass that he needed a blood transfusion later that evening, with doctors warning him that he was only an “hour from death” when he received treatment, Mr Walters said.

But the robber still had the presence of mind to remove some of the glass and wash the doorway with water to remove forensic evidence while his accomplices stormed through the bank and took £42,870.

Tansey was the getaway driver when about £150,000 in cash was stolen in the Elland raid, during which a security guard delivering money had to fend off blows from the robbers while a customer looked on in fear.

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Eight days later, Henry carried a sledgehammer as he and two other armed men walked into the HSBC in Marsh and stole more than £306,000.

The court heard a statement from bank worker Paul Robinson, who still needs counselling after he was struck on the head with the flat side of a machete during the raid.

“This crime has had a huge impact on my whole life,” Mr Robinson said. “My first thought was, ‘This could be the day that I die, and I don’t want to die’.”

The gang escaped in a Vauxhall Vectra, before getting into a Vauxhall Combi van, which Tansey drove towards Manchester at speeds of up to 80mph on a road with a 30mph limit as police followed.

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A police video of the chase played in court showed Tansey weaving through traffic, mounting a kerb, running red lights and veering into the path of oncoming cars.

Judge Geoffrey Marson QC said: “It is as bad a piece of dangerous driving as I have ever seen in a determined and successful attempt to escape justice. Happily, you have failed to do so.

“You fled to Spain, I have no doubt first of all to avoid detection and secondly to spend your ill-gotten gains enjoying yourself in the sunshine.”

Tansey, of Pegwell Drive, Salford, was jailed for 11 years and Henry, of Merridge Walk, Salford, was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison.

Two other gang members, Carl Hargin and Patrick McDonagh, were jailed in 2009 for their part in the Huddersfield raid.