Nightmare for store staff (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Nightmare for store staff

Freddy KruegerPOLICE have launched a massive search after a man in a Freddy Krueger mask robbed a Wootton Bassett shop and threatened the female staff with a gun.

The police helicopter was used to try and track the armed robber and officers throughout Wiltshire were on the lookout for the getaway car.

Staff at the shop say it was a traumatic ordeal that will take them a long time to get over.

The gun-toting thief swooped on Balfour News, in Longleaze Road, Wootton Bassett, at 11.45am on Saturday.

PC Phil Connor, of Wootton Bassett police, said the offender approached the four female staff wearing the mask and a grey hooded top.

He said: "The offender approached the staff and produced a silver handgun. The gun was pointed towards the staff and the offender demanded cash. The members of staff were absolutely traumatised by it.

"At this stage we don't know for sure if it was a real gun but we are treating it as an armed robbery."

The robber left the shop still wearing the mask, with £100, and got into a red estate car parked in Queens Road and headed towards the Rosary.

Sandy Smith, 51, of Wootton Bassett was at the till when the man burst in and she had to hand over the cash.

She said: "I don't feel good. I'm shaken up by it. I feel about 20 years older. It was very, very scary. It will live with me a very long time.

"I was actually standing at the till and he just came up and said 'give me the money'.

"I got the key for the till and I was trying to open the cash box.

"Obviously I was very scared and I was shaking so it took a while to get the key in and he was waving the gun about."

Sophie Gullick, 18, an A-level student who works at the store part time, said it was thanks to a recent course her manager sent her on, that she knew what to do.

"Before I would have been worried about protecting the money but after the course I knew to just hand it over and I hit the panic button," she said.

"It didn't really hit me at first. I wanted to make sure the person I was working with was all right and then it hit me half an hour later.

"I wasn't supposed to be working, I was covering for somebody else.

"The course helped but you don't know what to do until you have been in that situation like I found out."

The two shop assistants have now been given the week off to get over the ordeal. Anyone with information should call Wootton Bassett police on 01793 528 111 or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Behind the mask

FREDDY Krueger was the creation of script writer and film director Wes Craven.

The character came to the big screen in 1984 in the classic, Nightmare on Elm Street and he quickly became an icon of horror.

He killed his victims as they slept, appearing in their nightmares with his disfigured face and knives on his right hand.

Robert Englund, played the part of the supernatural serial killer and the film also starred Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp.

The director Wes Craven is also the man behind the three Scream movies. Krueger was an evil child molester, burned alive by the parents of the children he had killed in the past, who returned in the nightmares of Elm Street's teenagers.

He is able to attack and kill people through their dreams and does so with considerable violence and gore.

Gareth Bethell