Shop owners vigilant following killing

Security is the main priority of Anand Rao, owner of the Arch Hill superette in Gt North Rd, and other store owners. Picture / Greg Bowker

Dairy owners say they are staying vigilant and nervously waiting for police to catch the killer of minimart employee Bhagubhai Vaghela.

Auckland dairy owners spoken to by the Herald last night said the inner-city shooting was their worst nightmare. Anand Rao, owner of the Arch Hill Superette, said security was his main focus when he opened on Great North Rd nine months ago.

Like the Uptown Minimart, his dairy is on a busy road, in a small row of shops, and has an apartment building above.

His superette has a surveillance system with a monitor in an office hide-away showing who is entering the store. The office can be locked and not opened from the outside.

Mr Rao said security was foremost in his mind when he opened the shop because his wife sometimes works there. He said the minimart murder made him think of how he would react to an armed hold-up - he would give people what they wanted - but he had not considered getting out of the business.

"There's a risk in every business - service stations, bank tellers. We can't just get out. We have set ourselves up and we are building up."

Fareed Khan, who has run Rockey's Superette in Sandringham for 16 years, said he had never been the victim of serious crime.

He recently had a new surveillance system installed, and yesterday he asked the company to come back and check it was working properly after hearing the Uptown Minimart system had malfunctioned.

"All the time dairy owners are concerned," he said of the risk associated with running such a store.

Across the road, the Eden Park Superette owners said they were nervous and hoped police would soon catch the person or people responsible for killing Mr Vaghela.

"It was horrible, you can't imagine this thing happening," said the male owner, who did not want to be identified. His wife, who runs the shop most of the time, said they had security cameras, and the owners of businesses in the small block on Sandringham Rd kept an eye on each other. If one dairy closed early, the person over the road was also likely to close.

The dairy owners said they did not keep any kind of weapons behind the counter.