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Astonishing moment have-a-go hero fights off knife-wielding robber with cardboard tube
5 December 2024, 07:01 | Updated: 5 December 2024, 07:10
This is the astonishing moment when a 'have-a-go hero' shopkeeper confronted a knife-wielding robber with a tube of cardboard.
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The footage, taken in Dewsbury and shared exclusively with LBC, shows the man vandalising the shop in order to get to the till, throwing it on the floor. One man comes from the back and hits the assailant with a fire extinguisher. The robber can be heard shouting “I’ll stab you” a number of times.
That man, 38 year old Steven Lynn, pleaded guilty to two counts of robbery on Tuesday (3 December) and will be sentenced in January.
The shop owner, who also did not want to be named, explains, “He jumped over to grab the till. The young woman who was behind the counter ran away and one of the other men who works here tried to challenge him. He couldn’t take much but he smashed our terminal and till. It’s scary. It’s additional pressure on me. When it comes to business, you need to be economical but I can’t employ too many people just for safety reasons.”
The owner says he’s also seen instances where the police have become the target for responding to call outs.
“Last year, a female officer came and parked her car on the corner. Two schoolboys took a big stone and dropped it on the windscreen and smashed it. When the police are too frightened to come out of their vehicles, it’s too difficult for us to tackle", he told LBC.
Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, has become a hotbed of anti-social behaviour with masked teenagers running around with knives and machetes, fireworks being thrown at police cars and the local corner shop being robbed and vandalised.
Residents say police do respond, but it’s often not enough.
“There was an incident with a machete, where a member of the public managed to stop the guy. Police retrieved some kind of knife.” one resident, who didn’t want to be named, told LBC. “There have been weekends where there have been machetes, guys running around with balaclavas on. I’m not talking one offs, this a couple of times this has happened.
“On Halloween, the police were called and the group started throwing fireworks at them, so police left. I get that from their point of view, because they’ve got families to think about. When it’s one female officer coming out to more than 20 youths, it is intimidating. But as a community it doesn’t give us much reassurance.”
The Prime Minister will make “safer streets” a priority in his Plan for Change later today. Five months on from Labour’s election win, Sir Keir Starmer is setting out what’s being described as “ambitious milestones for change.” The government are promising “extra bobbies on the beat” and a contactable police officer in every neighbourhood.
Figures show police forces in England and Wales received 891,236 crime reports of anti-social behaviour in 2024, a slight decrease of 7% from the year before.
Some of the residents didn’t want to speak to us in fear of any retaliation from the youths. One couple with a young daughter have even sold their home because they’ve been targeted so much.
Sue lives in this particular area that’s been blighted by this anti-social behaviour.
She said, “I’ve got CCTV of children running around with machetes. This was around 9.30am. It’s very intimidating just going to the shop. They’re the same group who like to throw fireworks at other people. I think the only people who can solve it are the police, possibly the council by giving the kids something to do. There should be more Youth Clubs.”
An IFS report calculates 30% of Youth Clubs closed across the country between 2010 and 2019, leading to 10 to 17 year olds becoming 14% more likely to get involved in crime.
Carmen Villa is behind the report and told LBC, “Young people affected by the closure of youth services were more likely to be involved in crime. Youth services is an area that is not protected. Local authorities do have a statutory duty to provide these services but there are no strict guidelines, no set quotas or specifications on how they should provide those services.”
In a statement, Inspector Liz Lockwood of West Yorkshire Police said, “We are aware of recent concerns expressed regarding anti-social behaviour in Dewsbury. We have not recorded any recent increase in ASB style offending in that location so I would very much encourage anyone who has information or concerns to contact us so we can investigate.
“I recently met with residents at one of our regular Police and Community Together meetings to update them on the current crime picture in Dewsbury and made a similar appeal there. We very much base our policing as an NPT on the priorities of the communities we serve and I can promise we will investigate and take action to address ongoing issues and criminality.”
But not everyone agrees with what the police are saying. One resident said, “People here at the meeting said that they’d been reporting things to the police, but police then said, ‘we haven’t got that logged.’ How can you have officers coming out to obtain CCTV footage from people’s houses or the local shop and then say it’s not logged? Why else would officers be retrieving that information?”
Last month, the Home Secretary, whose constituency is 20 miles from Dewsbury, announced plans for ‘Respect Orders’ which would give police and councils powers to ban persistent offenders from town centres, parks and high streets where they’ve caused problems.
Yvette Cooper says it will target “hooligans who wreak havoc on local communities.” During the election campaign, Labour promised 13,000 police officers and community support officers working in neighbourhoods in England and Wales, which would involve hiring an extra 7,000 people.
In a speech later today, Starmer is expected to promise a named, contactable police officer for each neighborhood in England and Wales as part of the policing reforms.
