A mother-of-three has been been held at knifepoint by an aboriginal thief while working a morning shift at a Western Australia Woolworths supermarket.
Disturbing footage released by the retail giant shows the masked thug approach the cashier from behind and hold the knife to her throat while making her open the cash register.
The worker said she had just started her shift on a Sunday morning last month and families were pushing grocery-filled trolleys up to her register when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“I thought it was a friend or someone I knew so I didn’t really think ‘danger’,” she said.
“I turned to see who it was and was met with an unfamiliar face in a black ski mask and a knife. A really big knife.
“I looked up at my colleague who had brought over a basket and time froze. I can remember thinking ‘is this actually happening?’ and the look on her face … ‘yep, this is happening’.”
She said she was so frozen with fear she momentarily forgot how to open the till, and that although she felt calm while the robbery was in progress, as soon as the man left she started shaking uncontrollably.
“A colleague got my phone for me and I immediately rang my husband,” she said.
“It was all just a shock. I couldn’t believe that it had happened, let alone to me.”
The video was released as the CEOs of 22 of Australia’s largest retailers call for new Workplace Protection Orders to be brought in around the country to stop repeat offenders from entering stores, along with special police task forces to track down retail crime offenders.
Australia’s biggest chains have reported a substantial rise in retail theft and a soaring number of attacks, assaults and abuse of workers, with some stores seeing a 700% increase in these incidents since the pandemic, amid a rise in immigration and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Australian Retailers Association chief executive Chris Rodwell said last month that there were 800,000 retail-crime incidents lodged last year, with over half the country’s frontline workers stating that they suffered physically abuse on at least a monthly basis.
The financial effect of the incidents on the country is significant, causing an annual loss to the industry of over $9 billion, with Woolworths reporting a 26% surge in violent incidents over the past year.
Header image: The Woolworths robbery (Woolworths).
