Staff at a Penny On The Move forecourt in County Durham who were subject to two knifepoint robberies in the space of a week have been praised by the firm for their calm responses to the hold ups.
On Monday 30 March at around 11pm a man wearing a balaclava and gloves entered the firm’s Barnard Castle forecourt brandishing a large knife and demanded money from the till. Staff followed their training and opened the cash register for him, whereupon the robber took £270 in cash along with £60 worth of tobacco.
Police attended and initially considered the incident a one-off, while Penny reduced the site’s opening hours as a precautionary measure.
But on Friday 3 April the offender returned at 9:20pm, this time without a balaclava and wearing socks on his hands in lieu of gloves, and again brandishing a knife. As before he told staff to open the till, this time demanding £100. Staff followed procedure, letting him take the money while activating the silent alarm.
Barnard Castle Police duly attended and this time pulled out all the stops, launching a police helicopter and deploying a team of around 10 officers to scour the local area, stopping any lone males aged between 25 and 35.
Scenes of crime officers reviewed CCTV footage from the incident, and a suspect was subsequently arrested on the evening of Saturday 4 April.
“It’s a local community site, a real hub”, says Penny’s head of compliance and business development, Emma Shell. “It’s not a site we would typically identify as high risk, and we have little to no shoplifting there. We have a fantastic team, many of whom have been there for years, and the manager is real pillar of the community.”
“The staff were phenomenal”, Shell goes on to say. “Four colleagues were directly affected – two during the first robbery and two during the second – and they all did exactly the right thing: they stayed calm and did as the robber demanded”.
She adds that all four staff gave video statements to police, and they all picked the same man out of a police line-up – partly because even though he wore a face covering during the first incident, his prominent nose was identifiable.
It’s not just staff that Shell has praise for, though: “The police were fantastic, and local residents pulled together, particularly after the second robbery”, she says. “People were looking through their doorbell-camera footage without being asked to, and staff were given gifts, cards and words of support.”
Penny On The Move’s partnership with GroceryAid, meanwhile, was also of benefit after the incidents, with the charity visiting the site on multiple occasions and offering free counselling sessions to staff.
“Staff were upset, disheartened and angry”, Shell says. “There was a feeling of ‘why are we being picked on?’, and even colleagues who weren’t on site when the robberies occurred were concerned. Everyone returned to work though, and it was a great relief when a suspect was identified.”
Matthew Reece Howe, 30, from Cockfield, County Durham, has been charged with two counts of robbery. He did not enter a plea when appearing at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court on 7 April, and was remanded in custody. He is set to appear at Durham Crown Court in May.
