BARBERTON – On Monday at approximately 17:45 two young men pulled off a robbery at Furnmart in Crown Street, but weren’t all that successful regarding their “haul”. This newspaper spoke to Cynthia van Wyk-Khufhaldaf, credit manager of the store, shortly after the incident took place.
She said the drivers were unloading stock and carrying it into the shop, when she and some of the other staff became aware of two young men standing outside the windows facing Crown Street.
The moment the driver and his assistant entered the store they walked in and one of them closed the door. The other man spoke in what Van Wyk-Khufhaldaf believed was siSwati, ordering the personnel to come forward.
“At that time I was on the phone to manager, Chris Storm. The moment I saw what was happening I told him we were being robbed and he should call the police.
Luckily I didn’t have the phone in my hand as we were on speaker,” she said.
The men, who appeared to be in their mid- to late twenties, then ordered everyone to the back of the shop.
“One of them, a very dark skinned man, kept his hand in his pants pocket the whole time and some of the staff assumed that he was armed. He started shoving me towards the kitchen and I told him that I was capable of walking, and he should stop pushing me. By that time I realised he was not armed. Had he been, he would already have taken the gun out,” she said.
The six people, consisting of five staff members and the young child of the stock controller, Vanessa Venter, were ordered into the kitchen where they were told to lie on the floor.
Van Wyk-Khufhaldaf said, “They demanded that we give them the keys to the display cabinet in which the cellphones were kept, but I told them the manager had already left and she had the keys.”
They proceeded to break the cabinet and closed the door on the six lying on the floor.
In the meantime, Storm informed the SAPS and Hi-Tech of the robbery that was taking place.
Soon after, the hostages heard the screeching of tyres. Furnmart’s driver opened the kitchen door and when they went into the store, they saw the police chasing the getaway vehicle, a silver Toyota.
The culprits didn’t get far. They sped down the street, turned right into Stanley and just after crossing De Villiers, the driver lost control of the vehicle and smashed through the prefab wall of a private residence, missing some vehicle in the yard and coming to a halt.
The perpetrators abandoned the car with the loot and took flight. According to bystanders, the SAPS pursued them, but at the time of going to print they had not yet been captured. Of the 38 stolen cellphones, 25 were recovered, including Venter’s. Five LED Samsung TVs were also found in the vehicle.
