KEY POINTS:
A dairy owner robbed at knifepoint made six 111 calls to police - but the calls went unanswered because of a Telecom breakdown.
The robber was eventually caught by a group of teenagers who dragged him 250m to a police station.
Police were yesterday awaiting a report from Telecom over the fault that left New Lynn dairy owner Daniel Zheng unable to call for help after a man confronted him with a 20cm kitchen knife on Monday.
Mr Zheng, 45, told the Herald the robber came into his Totara Ave store about 2.45pm and demanded money.
The man lunged at him with the knife and stole his wallet. "I grabbed a hammer and I said, 'Get out'. He came at me with the knife. I used the hammer and hit him."
After a struggle, which left Mr Zheng with grazes on his leg and wrist, the man fled.
Mr Zheng chased the man and called 111 four times on his cellphone but got no answer.
He caught up with the robber about 250m away and demanded the wallet. Five teenagers came to Mr Zheng's aid and he ran back to his unattended store and made two more unsuccessful 111 calls.
Mr Zheng said he was "very angry" about the breakdown.
Four boys - Solomona Savelio, 16, Sione Lolohea, 17, Andrew Taia, 18, and Brian Luafalealo, 15 - and a female classmate took the robber to the New Lynn police station.
Solomona said the group had finished their alternative education studies for the day when they spotted the robber running away from Mr Zheng.
"We asked him [Mr Zheng] what happened and he just said to us to go get him, so Brian took off first. I was just behind him."
Brian, the first to catch up, got into a scuffle with the robber about 30m away and the group "grabbed him and dragged him" to the police station.
Telecom spokesman Mark Watts said the company apologised to any customers who "suffered inconvenience or distress" during the outage. Telecom personally apologised to Mr Zheng yesterday.
Overall, tens of thousands of phonecalls might have been affected by the hardware failure that overloaded the Auckland network, Mr Watts said.
Sergeant Grant Watson of New Lynn police said the teenagers' actions were heroic.
"I said to them that while we don't really condone getting into a confrontation, it's great because we've saved someone possibly from a serious injury and we've apprehended an offender who's committing a very serious offence."
* A 30-year-old beneficiary has been charged with aggravated robbery, threatening to kill and two counts of aggravated assault.
