On Sunday evening about 7pm, Addie Zhang was working in the office of the Stadium Store, which she owns with her husband.
Hearing the bell ring twice in quick succession, she looked up at the television screen displaying a live feed of her Victoria Rd dairy and saw two ``fully-masked'' people dressed in black, a man and a woman.
She decided against going out to the shop floor to serve the pair, instead watching in horror as the woman rushed around behind the counter, opened the unlocked tobacco cabinet and grabbed fistfuls of Pall Mall cigarette packs and pouches of loose tobacco branded Park Drive, worth about $1000 all up.
``We worked all week for nothing.''
The pair fled the store, pursued by Ms Zhang's husband out the door and down Victoria Road, where they sped away in a red Mazda hatchback.
Challenge Fitzroy service station attendant Callum MacArthur said a red Mazda was involved in a petrol theft about an hour before the dairy theft.
Ms Zhang said she had specifically laid out her store to create a long route from the door to the counter, but the fact the woman knew exactly where to go suggested the pair had cased the dairy before the brazen theft.
Ms Zhang said she and her husband had owned the dairy for five years but this was the first such incident they had experienced.
``We always knew it would happen.''
A police spokeswoman said immediately after the incident they were treating it as a theft rather than a robbery because no weapon had been used.
However, Ms Zhang said the man appeared to be holding a dark black object as he waited for his partner in crime to grab the tobacco, which she believed might have been a knife or a gun.
Last month, the Musselburgh Food Centre was robbed by a masked man and woman who stole the tobacco from Stadium Store on Sunday.
Security cameras in the Musselburgh Rise store captured images of the male assailant brandishing what appeared to be a handgun as his female accomplice stood at the till.
A police spokesman said yesterday the investigation into this robbery was still ongoing and no arrests had been made.
Police interviewed Ms Zhang and her husband yesterday at their home adjoining the store, where they live with their two young children.
The couple had provided CCTV footage to the police and ``initial inquiries were being made''.
Meanwhile, the police investigation into the aggravated robbery of a BNZ bank in Mosgiel in February is also ongoing.
A police spokesman confirmed no arrests have been made in relation to the February 2 robbery of the Gordon Rd branch.
