Terror for Post Office staff as gang used digger to crash through wall

ONE minute staff at a Post Office in Leeds were working normally, the next they were facing a pile of rubble as robbers ram-raided a hole through the wall from the street using a heavy digger.

Seconds earlier Beverley Robinson, the assistant branch manager at Crossgates Post Office, had been using a computer inches away from where the robbers crashed in. If she had not moved she might not have lived to tell the tale, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Eight members of staff were doing a stock take after the doors were locked when the ruthless robbers struck on December 12, 2007.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A witness watched in amazement as the driver of a red digger accelerated from the opposite side of the road, its telescopic arm hitting the wall and breaching it. He then saw the driver jump out and scramble over the rubble shouting “Give us the money” and a second man follow.

Mrs Robinson heard what she thought was an explosion and hurried back into the main Post Office. As she did a man all in black with a scarf around his face was standing on her desk.

He shouted to her to get on the floor, threatening to kill her.

The raiders took two security boxes containing only stamps and missed 50,000 in the main safe.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The pair fled in a stolen Ford Focus which was later hidden in a garage in Moortown, Leeds, rented by an associate of Dennis Slade. It had been stolen from the owner’s drive in Cottingley, Leeds, only five days earlier.

As in a raid on a security van near Warrington the previous year, the heavy equipment used was stolen to order. The telescopic loader was taken earlier that day from a building site at Sandmoor Drive, round the corner from Slade’s home.

Related topics: