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High street agent helps foil armed robbery
A quick thinking travel agency manager helped foil a robbery in Winchester city centre on Friday.
Heidi Benham, the manager of Toucan Travel’s Winchester Travel Service branch in Parchment Street, was with two colleagues in the shop preparing to open just before 9am when she saw a van pull up outside and two armed men, wearing motorcycle helmets, jump out and run into the jewellery shop next door.
She left the shop door locked, took the two other staff to the back of the agency and immediately telephoned the police.
While she stayed on the line, police sealed off the whole area and a fast police response unit, with dogs, rushed to the scene.
The two men were apprehended by police as they left the bespoke jewellery shop, Justice Jewellers.
Police said more than £200,000 worth of items were taken in the raid.
Three men – David George, 21, Joshua Tiloye, 21, both from Hertfordshire, and Domingo Nsita, 28, from Wembley – have been charged with robbery and possession of an imitation firearm and are due to appear at Basingstoke Magistrates’ Court today (Monday).
Toucan Travel managing director Terry Thornhill said the Winchester shop remained closed for the whole of Friday and staff were interviewed by police for around four hours. It re-opened on Saturday.
Last summer, another quick thinking staff member at Toucan Travel’s Hook agency was also able to avert a robbery, this time at the agency itself.
The young staff member was in the shop when a man entered, wearing a hoodie, and passed her a note, which demanded she opened the safe and handed over the cash.
Calmly, the agent looked at the card and said she’d not seen ‘one of these before’ so ‘hang on a minute, I’d better go and show the manager’.
As she turned to walk towards where the manager was seated, the wannabe thief panicked and ran out of the shop.
"I’m very proud of both members of staff. They reacted brilliantly," said Thornhill, who is at this week’s Advantage Conference on MSC Fantasia.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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