'Horrific' fight against robbers

The Waihi Beach Hotel. Picture / Alan Gibson

An off-duty barman at the Waihi Beach Hotel used a chair to ward off two robbers wielding golf clubs on Monday night.

A third man with a gun was holding up a patron outside, demanding his car keys.

Graeme Andrews, 26, said he grabbed a chair to protect his friend and boss Eddie Hessey, who had been attacked when he went outside to lock the back gate to the garden bar.

The pair had been alone at the bar at closing time, chatting and watching television. When Mr Hessey, the hotel manager, went to lock up, two masked men jumped the fence and chased him.

"As he got to the door, he was hit in the leg with a golf club, tripped and skidded along the ground past me," said Mr Andrews.

"I picked up a chair and told them to get out. We had a little bit of a stand-off."

One was wearing a balaclava and the other a white "ghost mask".

"It was pretty horrific actually," a badly shaken Mr Andrews said yesterday.

Unbeknown to him then, a patron who had been in the toilet had left and been stopped at his car by an armed, balaclava-clad man.

Meanwhile, the pair inside were threatening to "do over" Mr Andrews, demanding money and saying their mate was coming with a gun.

"We were yelling at each other. I was very terrified," said the barman, who has worked at the hotel for 18 months.

From the floor where he was lying, Mr Hessey was trying to calm the would-be robbers.

"Our policy is to let them have what they want. Eddie is my boss so I almost put the chair down, but I think they would have gone ahead and bashed us anyway," said Mr Andrews.

"I had a chair and they had golf clubs. They could have done me over but they were slowly backing away. It took them a while to realise I was a bit crazed. They had hurt my friend Eddie and I didn't want them to hurt him any more, or me."

If he had not forced them to retreat and managed to slam the door on them in time, he believed their gun-carrying accomplice would have joined them and things could have been different.

"They didn't get any money."

As he ran for the telephone, Mr Andrews said he saw the bar patron through the window.

"He was stooped over a bit and I thought he had been shot but he'd been hit in the arm with the scope of the gun."

Mr Andrews quickly let him in while the pair who had been pushed outside were urging the third man to flee.

Armed offenders squads from Tauranga and Hamilton, plus other police staff from the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, were out in force around Waihi and Katikati yesterday tracking suspects.

Arrests had been made last night.