Armed robbers have left a restaurant crew shaken and tearful, as they geared up for a busy Father’s Day.<\/p>\n
Hamilton’s Smith and McKenzie steakhouse had re-opened Sunday evening, after the morning robbery and subsequent police investigation.<\/p>\n
Two people – one holding a firearm – entered the restaurant in Lynden Court, Chartwell, shortly before 11.30am, police said.<\/p>\n
Duty manager Dana Morrison said the two men entered through the back door shortly before the restaurant was due to open for lunch. About a dozen staff were working at the time.<\/p>\n
One of the intruders had a gun and threatened staff with it, before trashing the restaurant and fleeing with the till.<\/p>\n
The offenders, who looked like they were in their late 20s or early 30s, were in the restaurant for about 15-20 minutes, she said.<\/p>\n
Armed police responded to the call for help.<\/p>\n
The robbers fled in a vehicle and, while a vehicle thought to be connected to the robbery was then found nearby in the Chartwell area, the suspects remained at large on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Cordons were set up in the area and officers made enquiries.<\/p>\n
RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Armed robbers have left a restaurant crew shaken and tearful, as they geared up for a busy Father’s Day. Hamilton’s Smith and McKenzie steakhouse had re-opened Sunday evening, after the morning robbery and subsequent police investigation. Two people – one holding a firearm – entered the restaurant in Lynden Court, Chartwell, shortly before 11.30am, police […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14911,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions\/14911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}