A Christchurch bar was targeted early this morning by "disorganised" armed robbers who took 20 minutes to steal alcohol, cigarettes and up to $10,000 in cash, police said.
Three masked men, armed with a pistol, knife and tyre iron, confronted two staff members and two patrons at the Bedrock Bar in the suburb of Addington, just as the bar closed about 3am.
The men locked the victims in the toilet while they robbed the bar. The robbers then locked them in a bottle store, and ran across the road to a carpark where they escaped.
"This is a brazen robbery where the robbers who were armed have been lying in wait at the rear of the bar," said Detective Sergeant Scott Anderson.
"The robbers, we have been told, seemed disorganised." Spending 20 minutes on a robbery was "quite a while", he said.
The men, described as Maori or Pacific Islanders in their late teens or early 20s, appeared to have taken between $5000 and $10,000, although a more accurate audit would be done, Mr Anderson said.
The men were wearing hoodies and had covered their faces with scarves.
