Hamilton grocery workers fearful, frustrated after brazen knifepoint robbery

Workers at a small Hamilton grocery store have been left shaken after it was targeted by a gang of youths last night in a brazen knifepoint robbery, despite there being plenty of witnesses in the car park and dining at a next-door restaurant.

Some of the bystanders filmed as the group of roughly five to eight hurriedly dumped trays of cigarettes on to a laundry basket at the entrance of SuperValue on Gordonton Rd - all cramming into a single white sedan as they fled the scene roughly a minute later.

"Your ride's running away, brother!" one bystander taunted as the last person sprinted out of the store. "Get him cuz, your ride's gone!"

Witness Te Reti McLeod said he had just finished dinner next door around 8pm when he heard yelling and spotted the robbery in progress.

"They're all young as - 15, I reckon," he said of the group, which he said consisted of five people raiding the store and possibly a couple of others in the getaway car.

Witnesses have described one of the youths as wielding a large kitchen knife or small saw.

"They were in and out real quick," McLeod said. "That was pre-meditated. They knew what they were doing."

Jignesh Vyas, who is supervising the store while its owner is on holiday overseas, agreed that the raid seemed co-ordinated.

"It's happening everywhere now, unfortunately," he said. "They have no fear of the consequences. Even if caught, the next day they'll be released. That's the main problem: law and order isn't strict enough.

"It's hard to run a business now. We're all fearful."

Police are investigating and say the two cars used in the heist were found abandoned on Springfield Crescent at around 10.30pm.

"Police would like to hear from anyone was in the area around the time of the robbery and has information which could assist our enquiries."

Last night was far from the first time the store has been targeted.

"Every time they did something we increased security," Vyas said, explaining that bollards and other security measures were put in to stop ram raids. "So now they come in the opening hours."

No one was harmed in yesterday's raid, but an employee who was on duty last night is "nervous" and taking the day off, Vyas said, adding that he's not yet sure how much merchandise was taken.

In addition to the shaken employee, the raid has managed to ruin owner Manish Thakkar's holiday, the supervisor said.

"Now he's calling me every hour: 'Did you call police? Did you call insurance?'" he explained.

In recent years Thakkar has been an outspoken critic of increasingly violent crime against Hamilton dairies, liquor stores and small supermarkets.

Thakkar called a meeting of about 100 business owners in 2018 calling for urgent action after two violent tobacco raids in Hamilton in two days in which thieves used a machete and a hammer. He said at the time that his own two family businesses, which also include a dairy, had been targeted up to seven times and the violence seemed to be escalating.

"It is frightening," he previously told the Herald. "Even with both of us in the shop still it is scary because we can't do nothing to the thieves.

"We surrender ourselves. We ask them to get what they want but still they hurt us badly."