PHUKET: A gun-wielding Phuket robber threatened to shoot a teller as he stole almost 700,000 baht from a bank branch in just 33 seconds tonight.
Security camera footage showed the bandit took just a couple of seconds more than half a minute to execute the raid on a Kasikorn Bank branch in Chao Fa Road East, near Phuket Villa Three, south of Phuket City.
Hundreds of Sunday night residents and tourists were out shopping in the Tesco supermarket centre when the raider struck about 6.15pm, said Phuket City police.
Teller Saowarat Klimkub, 24, told officers that the man, wearing a black jacket and a yellow and white helmet, threw a bag and said: ''Give me just 1000 baht notes in this bag or I will shoot.''
Khun Saowarat obeyed the order. Police and bank officials later calculated that the bandit had made off on the back of a motorcycle ridden by an accomplice with a total of 694,000 baht in cash.
Bank robberies are relatively rare on Phuket.
Just last weekend, two men were arrested and confessed to the robbery of a currency exchange kiosk at Karon, south of Patong, on Phuket's west coast, on November 26.
Only a small portion of the stolen 1.7 million baht has been recovered. One of the men was a worker at the Siam Commercial Bank kiosk.
Security camera footage showed the bandit took just a couple of seconds more than half a minute to execute the raid on a Kasikorn Bank branch in Chao Fa Road East, near Phuket Villa Three, south of Phuket City.
Hundreds of Sunday night residents and tourists were out shopping in the Tesco supermarket centre when the raider struck about 6.15pm, said Phuket City police.
Teller Saowarat Klimkub, 24, told officers that the man, wearing a black jacket and a yellow and white helmet, threw a bag and said: ''Give me just 1000 baht notes in this bag or I will shoot.''
Khun Saowarat obeyed the order. Police and bank officials later calculated that the bandit had made off on the back of a motorcycle ridden by an accomplice with a total of 694,000 baht in cash.
Bank robberies are relatively rare on Phuket.
Just last weekend, two men were arrested and confessed to the robbery of a currency exchange kiosk at Karon, south of Patong, on Phuket's west coast, on November 26.
Only a small portion of the stolen 1.7 million baht has been recovered. One of the men was a worker at the Siam Commercial Bank kiosk.
As scary as this is for the teller, this is the reason why banks in Britain put up the glass screen so they can't be robbed.
Maybe the banks should invest so they are not soft targets anymore.
Posted by Tbs on January 29, 2012 22:02