A BRITISH robber was behind bars today after CCTV images showed him raiding a store in Wales wearing the same Halloween mask he bought from the shop days earlier.<\/p>\n
Neil Simons, 27, from Cardiff, south Wales, was the only man who bought the \u00a33.99 ($6.00) Halloween disguise from the combined Co-op shop and gas station before October 25 last year, a court heard Wednesday.<\/p>\n
He returned to the store three days later, wearing the mask and carrying an ax, which he used to threaten a lone female cashier, the South Wales Echo reported.<\/p>\n
Simons, a former \u00a31000-a-week asbestos remover, admitted robbery and was jailed for five years.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor John Probert said, “For a minute, she [cashier] thought it was a colleague playing a practical joke, but then she saw the ax” and pleaded with Simons not to use the weapon. \u201cHe told her he wouldn\u2019t as long as she did what he said, and she put between \u00a340 and \u00a350 into the bag he handed over.”<\/p>\n
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\n * White bandit disguised as black man The Daily Telegraph, 1 Dec 2010
\n * Trio rob chicken shop with cleaver The Daily Telegraph, 29 Nov 2010<\/p>\n
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The court heard that police searched through the store\u2019s CCTV recordings to find that Simons was the only person who bought the mask at the site.<\/p>\n
“The fact he bought the mask then returned to the same petrol station wearing it, shows it wasn’t a sophisticated crime,” said Simons’ defense lawyer, Kieron Malloy.<\/p>\n
Simons was made redundant at his job and wanted to pay off drug debts, the court was told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A BRITISH robber was behind bars today after CCTV images showed him raiding a store in Wales wearing the same Halloween mask he bought from the shop days earlier. Neil Simons, 27, from Cardiff, south Wales, was the only man who bought the \u00a33.99 ($6.00) Halloween disguise from the combined Co-op shop and gas station […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ubune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}