An Upper Hutt dairy owner has shared footage of a frightening attempted robbery in the hope of assisting police in identifying the offender, The New Zealand Herald reported. The incident occurred on Sunday at the Redwood Dairy, just after 10 am, when a man entered the store and asked for band-aids.
Store owner Jugvinder informed the man that he did not have any in stock. The man left but soon returned wearing a mask and wielding a tyre iron. He attempted to jump over the counter towards Jugvinder, who quickly armed himself with a stick and gave chase.
Speaking to the Herald, Jugvinder’s wife, Manmeet, recounted the events. “He came back to frighten my husband, and my husband couldn’t understand why that was. Then the guy tried to jump over the counter, so my husband stepped back and tried to find something to save himself,” she said.
“He grabbed a little stick and ran after him, but the guy left the scene," Herald quoted.
Manmeet, who typically opens the shop on Sundays with her daughter, expressed her relief that she was not present during the incident. “This was really, really scary for me because usually I open on Sundays ... it could have been me and my daughter,” she said.
When her husband called to inform her of the incident, Manmeet immediately rushed to the shop. “I said, ‘We need to ring the police; we can’t take this lightly.’ I rang the emergency number, and the police came in about 15 minutes and fetched the [security] videos.”
The couple later posted the security footage on Facebook, hoping someone in the community might recognise the offender. The man’s face was clearly captured on camera during his first visit to the store when he was not wearing a mask. Manmeet also revealed that the man had been driving a stolen car.
She urged anyone who recognised the man to contact the police immediately. “This is the only source of income for us, our only livelihood ... we work 13 hours a day to earn income,” she said.
Manmeet described those who target small businesses as “scumbags.” “They might be coming from a bad background or they have a sad story from their family or their childhood was something traumatic. That is all secondary ... they’re robbing us, and it’s not okay. It’s really awful,” she said.
This is the second attempted robbery the Redwood Dairy has faced, the first having occurred in 2023. The couple remains hopeful that someone will come forward with information to help bring the offender to justice