An elderly Chinese woman with no English stood frozen in darkness as a man demanded cash from her family takeaway shop.
He had tampered with the powerbox before entering Ming Takeaways in Mangere - about 1am on Wednesday - so the 70-year-old could not see him and did not understand
what he was saying.
When she did not comply he struck her round the head with a weapon, knocking her to the ground.
The woman called out to her 38-year-old son in Cantonese "the guy is hitting me" and he rushed out from the back of the shop. He found his mother lying on the ground with a deep gash in her forehead and a bleeding, swollen eye. She was taken to Middlemore Hospital with blurred vision and discharged that morning.
"It was very scary. Somebody came into the shop and used something to hit my mum, but because she couldn't see anything and couldn't speak English ..." the son said.
He and the chef chased the man down the street, but lost sight of him and called police.
The man did not get any cash.
Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Pizzini said police believed the man tampered with the shop's powerbox so it was dark when he entered the shop.
He warned business owners to beware of the new style of robbery.
"Our advice is for shop proprietors to check power boxes if accessible from public places and make sure they are secured by padlocks so this can't happen," said Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Pizzini.
The man sought by police is 18 to 20 years old, about 178cm tall, wearing a blue bandanna over his mouth, a baseball cap and a light-coloured hooded sweatshirt.
Anyone with information relating to the robbery is asked to contact Manukau police on (09) 2591200.
