A SECURITY guard has spoken of the terrifying moment he was confronted by armed robbers during an £85,000 daylight raid at a Malvern supermarket.

CCTV shows two masked men in dark clothing entering the Co-op supermarket in Upper Howsell Road in Malvern, one wielding a pickaxe handle in a threatening manner.

A robber was heard by one of the security men to shout ‘hit him, hit him!’ before they made off with the cash while one of the security guards was struck with a shopping basket before the robbers fled.

Richard Allwood, 31, of Winchester Drive, Chelmsley Wood, Solihull, Thomas Sidwell, 30, of Allens Croft Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham, and Ryan Weir, 22, of Flaxley Road, Stetchford, Birmingham, all deny conspiracy to commit robbery.

Hereford Crown Court heard this week how the three men are alleged to have been part of a conspiracy to rob the supermarket’s cash point at around 10.40am on Monday, April 20.

Four other men, Ryan Griffin, brothers Lewis O’Brien and Luke O’Brien and Chad Pulisciano have already admitted conspiracy to commit robbery.

Sharon Bahia, prosecuting, read out a statement by security guard Gary Leake who has now been the victim of robbery three times.

Mr Leake was at the cash machine inside the supermarket with colleague George Robinson when the raid took place.

The iBox which is used to contain the cash was between the security men when they heard shouting.

Mr Leake called a third colleague on his radio, Dean McCauley, to alert him to what was happening.

He said: “I heard shouting and and someone saying ‘hit him, hit him!’ or words to that effect.”

During the raid he also saw a second robber carrying a wooden pickaxe handle about 3ft 6ins in length and and one and a half inches across.

Mr Leake said his colleague, Mr Robinson, was hit on the arm with a shopping basket during the raid.

Three cash cassettes were then removed by the robbers from the back of the ATM containing £85,000 in cash, £20,000 in £10 notes and £65,000 in £20 notes.

The robbers were seen getting into a silver Mazda saloon car which was abandoned not far from the scene of the robbery.

Mr Leake managed to make a note of the car registration of the getaway car (although it later transpired the car had false plates) which he described as speeding off.

It is the third time Mr Leake has been robbed, the previous occasion ending in hospitalisation.

Before the robbery the Mazda had been spotted by David Parsons in a small cul-de-sac near the Anchor pub in Malvern.

Another witness saw something being thrown from the Mazda into the sliding doors of a van.

The prosecution say the defendants got into this van and that those involved in the conspiracy met up after the robbery at the Willows Caravan Park in Tewkesbury.

CCTV from the caravan park shows a van pulling up at the caravan park at 11.25am which the prosecution say contained the defendants who have already admitted the robbery.

A red Peugeot can be seen arriving at the caravan park at 1.45pm hired by one of the defendants, Richard Allwood, with co-defendant Thomas Sidwell as a passenger.

A silver Seat alleged to have been driven by Ryan Weir also arrived at the site at 1.59pm, parking next to one of the caravans.

The prosecution say the Seat was driven away from the site at 2.12pm by Luke O’Brien after the conspirators had lunch at a pub near the caravan site, celebrating with four orders of burgers and chips.

The passengers in the Seat were Ryan Griffin, Ryan Weir and Luke O’Brien.

The Seat Ibiza was later stopped on the M42 at around 2.55pm on the day of the robbery where police found a document showing the address of the caravan park, keys that fitted the van and a security tag from one of the stolen cash boxes.

At the caravan police recovered face masks, a wooden object and a sledgehammer and a packet of elastic bands.

Witness PC Stephen Tomlinson described the moment the Seat was pulled over on the M42 near junction 3A northbound by five unmarked police vehicles.

Around £75,000 of the money tied up with elastic bands was found in a rucksack.

PC Tomlinson of West Midlands Police was in the lead vehicle and initially thought there were only two people in the car as two others were ‘crouched down in the back seat’.

He said: “The incident was done at speed. We were tasked to detain people involved in the offence.

“He (Weir) was removed forcibly but carefully from the vehicle and taken straight to the ground. He looked startled.”

Mobile phones were seized and 11 £20 notes which Weir claimed was his ‘ADHD money’. Police have not been able to recover all of the handsets of the suspects.

Phone records were also analysed which showed that phones registered to the alleged co-conspirators had been in contact with one another between April 17 and April 20, usually calls of very short duration.

However, police had been unable to obtain the content of text messages or voicemail recordings, only what was effectively the billing data the court was told.

Thomas Schofield, for Allwood, said while cross-examining DC Ian Atherley of West Midlands Police: “You don’t know for any of these calls the content of these telephone calls.

“You can attribute a phone to a certain person but you can’t say at any given time whether that person was indeed using that phone.”

He also argued that the telephone schedule was ‘cherry picking’ which was disputed by the officer.

Mr Schofield said: “It’s not possible for you to say whether the contact around April 20, around the robbery, is any different from the contact and frequency of contact six months beforehand.”

The trial continues.