Oxfordshire retailer, Ian Lewis, was awoken on Tuesday night as four bandits entered his store armed with angel grinders
“You think, oh, that won’t be me in sleepy, affluent Minster Lovell village….” recalls Ian Lewis, just two days after would-be thieves smashed their way into his store. But it transpires that, sadly, it was.
The store - which Ian’s parents live above, came under attack on the morning of 11 September. But a little luck meant the attackers were unable to access the ATM which it soon transpired was their target. Ian’s mum, awoken by banging, assumed the noise was the first member of staff arriving for work, but realised 1am was some three hours before that shift started.
“She shouted for my dad and then there’s a lot of banging. And he ran downstairs, looked out the front window and saw the four guys run to the car. They’d already put the disc cutters away, They didn’t even go behind the cigarette counter. So it was pretty obvious that they just wanted the machine…”
The positioning of the machine in Ian’s store meant access to its hinges was impossible and there was no way for the angel grinder to work. “I think their plan was to take the cassettes out the front, to pop the safe and take those. They didn’t bring bags and had no holdall. The police thought it might have been for cigarettes - that’s the first thing they asked me to check, and obviously they pulled the CCTV cables out and just made a right mess of that. But we managed to get all 26 cameras back up and running.”
Sadly, the CCTV footage has so far yielded no results, and despite some shaken parents and staff, nothing was stolen. The local community have also been a great help, Ian says. “I put a post out on Facebook asking if there was anyone that could spare an hour or two just to help get the delivery away because you plan for rotas. We managed to open at half 11 that morning, although we lost the busy trading period of the morning.”
On reflection, Ian says he’s been supported throughout the ordeal – both by an “excellent” police response, and also from the community. As his initial post online after the event stated, he aims to moved onwards and upwards. “The support on social media, the best wishes, make you feel a bit better about it. You know, everyone’s got your back.”
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