A ram-raid at a liquor store in Frankton yesterday is the second in the area in the past eight months.<\/p>\n
Big Barrel Remarkables Park owner Ranbir Singh said the ram-raid occurred about 2.30am, with CCTV footage showing a car being driven into the store’s entrance at “full speed”.<\/p>\n
Four males who looked like older teenagers spent about two minutes “grabbing whatever they could grab” before driving away.<\/p>\n
Mr Singh estimated the value of the stolen stock and the damage to the building at “quite a few thousand dollars”.<\/p>\n
“They damaged quite a bit more stock than what they took.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The store’s security system raised the alarm immediately, and he understood the incident was witnessed by a few bystanders, who had contacted police.<\/p>\n
It is the second ram-raid of a liquor store in the area in the past eight months – a Super Liquor store about 100 metres away was ram-raided by youths last November.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Singh said he understood police had made some arrests in connection to the incident.<\/p>\n
“That’s good news, and also for other businesses operating in Queenstown.<\/p>\n
“Today it’s my business – maybe tomorrow it’s going to be their business.”<\/p>\n
Mr Singh, who also owns liquor stores in Nelson and Christchurch, said there were fewer ram-raids happening around the country than a few years ago, so he was surprised there had been two in Queenstown in a short time.<\/p>\n
Such incidents were a “big dent” on its reputation.<\/p>\n
“People are flying from all over the world to come to Queenstown, and then these things happen.<\/p>\n
“New Zealand is supposed to be one of the safest countries.”<\/p>\n
Those responsible for the ram-raid had probably driven away at high speed, posing a risk to everyone else in the area.<\/p>\n
If an innocent person got hurt, it would be hugely damaging for the resort town’s global reputation, he said.<\/p>\n
“If you’re running from this type of thing, you’re not going to drive slowly.<\/p>\n
“Even late at night, people are still out enjoying themselves.”<\/p>\n
Remarkables Park management had arranged for the damage to be repaired quickly, which had allowed the store to reopen only a few hours later than usual, he said.<\/p>\n
Queenstown police and national police media have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ram-raid at a liquor store in Frankton yesterday is the second in the area in the past…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-537911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}