A bottle shop on the Sunshine Coast was recently targeted by a gang of young intruders in a snatch-and-grab theft.
The theft took place at the bottle shop attached to the Mountain Creek Tavern in Buderim, with CCTV footage showing bottle shop employee Patrick bravely intervene and prevent bottles of spirits being taken.
Damien Strong, Mountain Creek Tavern’s Venue Manager, told National Liquor News: “A gang of youths in our community have been terrorising the bottle shops and the community. We hadn’t had much personal experience with them, but they decided to do a snatch-and-grab on our shop.”
After reporting the theft to the police, Strong took to community groups on social media to alert the community about the incident. While the offenders wore face coverings during the theft, local residents who had seen the social media posts were able to provide local authorities with driveway footage to assist their investigation.
“I thought I’d reach out on our community pages and the Creek Tavern page, and the community response was insane. In under 12 hours people were providing names and addresses, and we gave those resources to the police,” Strong added.
“We found out later on that the same group had robbed another bottle shop before us, and did another bottle shop later that night. The good thing is, from what I hear, they all got charged.”
Explaining which products were targeted, Strong said: “It was absolutely bugger all, anything they could get – little packs of Smirnoff cans. When Patrick got him, they were trying to get three bottles of spirits from behind the counter, they got a bit greedy, but none of the bottles left the shop. They only got about four four-packs, but it was more about the principal than the dollar value.
“In the end, we had a perfect outcome, because our staff member was unharmed. Also, one of the fathers [of the offenders] came in to pay for the booze a few days later – he was really disappointed.
“The community are the real superstars of this story. I know every community is different, but we engage with our community a lot. I know there are a lot of other places that have their hands tied by company policies, but we took a gamble and that paid off,” he concluded.
