Police appeal after string of c-store robberies in Bristol

Police have launched a television appeal to track down a gang suspected of a string of high-value robberies at Bristol shops.

According to local reports, a four-man gang targeted three shops in the city on January 15 – a newsagents on Gloucester Road, a McColl’s convenience store in Bedminster and a supermarket in Easton. The thefts were featured on an episode of BBC’s Crimewatch Live telecasted on Tuesday (March 22), which recreated the scene of one of the thefts at the busy convenience store in Bedminster.

In the show, shop’s supervisor Louis Clarke revealed how two men entered the shop on Jan 15, followed by two more – all with their faces covered and wearing hats.

The gang members used tactics to distract Clarke and his colleague, while one of the men made his way into the back office and where more CCTV footage showed him searching around.

The man in the office eventually found the keys to the safe but, not being able to access a compartment, he went back out onto the shop floor to get help, returning to the office with an accomplice – as well as a sledgehammer, reports said.

When Clarke was about to enter the office, he was called away by two other members of the gang on some pretext.

Meanwhile the two gang members in the back office had broken into the secure safe compartment and made off with everything they could find – more than £1,814. It was only 15 minutes later Clarke and his colleague realised what had happened.

Less than half an hour earlier the gang had hit another small shop in Horfield, distracting the cashier while one of the men entered the stock room and stole more than £3,000 worth of cigarettes and a stash of scratch cards. Then, later that night at around 10.50pm in Easton, CCTV footage captured the same Mercedes forcing its way through a set of steel gates so they could break into a closed supermarket.

They used the same sledgehammer to smash through a back window and carry out a safe containing £800 on a trolley they had brought with them, before disappearing in the Mercedes, reports said.

Police have claimed that the culprits are not local.

“We believe that they’re not local. They seem to be a very organised crime group. They know what they’re doing – while the three distract the shop owner, the other one goes to the rear of the premises and steals whatever,” reports quoted DC Helen Shaw from Avon and Somerset Police as saying.