QLD: Police hunt for syringe bank robbers
15 Apr 2009 5:25 PM
GOLD COAST, April 15 AAP - Gold Coast businesses have been told to stay alert after a spike in robberies, including a frightening assault on a bank manager forced to rob his own bank.
Police are hunting for two men dressed as road workers who accosted 49-year-old John Forrester as he drove to work at the Mudgeeraba Bank of Queensland branch on Tuesday.
The men twice used a syringe to inject their victim with an unknown substance before demanding Mr Forrester supply them with cash.
He was dropped off at the bank, where he removed cash from the vault and left it at a specified location about 200m from the shopping complex, police said.
The heist comes after a string of recent robberies on the Gold Coast.
"There probably has been a spike in robberies in the last couple of weeks - some of them are street robberies, some are robberies on medium targets, like your IGAs," Acting Detective Inspector Terry Goldsworthy told reporters on Wednesday.
"We'd certainly be asking those types of stores to just monitor their security procedures, not to have large sums of money, be very vigilant of people acting suspiciously outside and make sure their surveillance footage is working.
"All that stuff assists in our investigations."
Security footage taken from the Mudgeeraba bank branch failed to show the two offenders, who did not enter the shopping complex where the bank is located.
Police have released comfit images of the two men.
Insp Goldsworthy said Mr Forrester was still waiting on test results which could reveal if the injections were harmful.
