Police rumble robbers after finding homemade balaclavas and cutout eyeholes
Two men who wore poorly made balaclavas to rob a petrol station were jailed at Warwick Crown Court this week after police found the cutout eyeholes as evidence.
Daniel Bale, 37, of Station Road, Maidstone, Kent (pictured top left), and Karl Evans, 34, of Ashlawn Road, Rugby, wore the balaclavas during a robbery at a petrol station in Hillmorton Road, Rugby on 8th May 2022.
Bale was seen on CCTV going into the shop and aggressively waving his arms at a member of staff who retreated into the back office for safety. He grabbed around £300 from the till and £70 worth of cigarettes.
Evans was seen on CCTV outside the shop acting as a lookout.
Following the incident an off-duty police officer chased the pair back to a house in Ashlawn Road where Bale and Evans barricaded themselves in the downstairs toilet.
Officers attended to arrest them and found the stolen items in the washing machine.
They also found the bits of material cutout eyeholes, the hats and scissors used.
As social media users have already pointed out, the black balaclava also allowed for eyes in the back of the head – and neither hat looked convincingly as though it would cover the face and leave the holes in the right place.
At court last week Bale was handed a three-year-and-five-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to robbery and failing to surrender to police at the appointed time.
Evans was jailed last year for his role in the robbery. He received a prison sentence of 20 months after pleading guilty to robbery and failing to surrender to police at the appointed time.
PC Maddie Hodgkins-Warren, who led the investigation, said: “Evans and Bale are certainly not criminal masterminds; they left a trail of evidence that made it very difficult for them to do anything other than plead guilty. However, it must have been an extremely frightening ordeal for the victim. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt and the quick thinking of a passing off duty police officer meant the pair were quickly identified as suspects and arrested.”
