A brazen mid-afternoon armed robbery of a central Napier insurance company yesterday left an employee with a split lip and police mystified as to why the offender chose that business to rob.
"It is bizarre," detective sergeant Mike Foster of the Napier CIB said.
"These are not places that handle a lot
of money."
But that was lost on the barefooted man who walked into AMI Insurance in Hastings Street about 3.30 and waved a pistol at staff, demanding money.
The man confronted the company's assistant manager and at one stage lashed out at him, striking him on the face with the butt of the pistol leaving him with a split lip.
After he was given what Mr Foster described as "very small" amount of cash the man fled, sprinting across the road and up through an alleyway-mall onto Marine Parade.
With the alarm raised police were on the scene within minutes, but despite wide searches of the area there was no sign of the robber.
He was last seen by a witness near the Sound Shell.
Mr Foster said the man may have discarded a black backpack-style bag he had been carrying somewhere along his escape path.
The man was described as Maori, early 20s, wearing wrap-around sunglasses, a long-sleeve sweatshirt, black shorts and a light-coloured beanie-type hat which had side flaps down over his ears.
