Unarmed robber bags £250,000 at airport

A robber posing as a guard escaped on foot with tens of thousands of pounds in cash from a security van at Gatwick Airport yesterday.

The unarmed man punched the driver of the van in the face and sprayed him with an unknown substance, before making off with £250,000 in bags of foreign currency being delivered to bureaux de change and shops at the airport.

The man is thought to have run off through a service tunnel under the south terminal.

Colin Deuchars, managing director of Brink's Limited in Britain, the security company that owns the van, said: "The investigation is still ongoing but we are fairly sure that the amount of money is somewhere in the region of £250,000."

The attack is the latest security van robbery at a London airport, although the previous raids – at Heathrow – occurred in restricted airside zones.

The robber struck at 7.30am as a two-man crew from Brink's Limited were preparing to unload foreign currency of varying denominations from 12 different countries. One of the guards had gone inside the terminal building when the robber, who was wearing a helmet, punched the 41-year-old driver in the face. He was later taken to hospital to be treated for a suspected broken nose.

The public road where the robbery took place is in a tunnel under the airport and is usually used by service vehicles.

Police were studying film from surveillance cameras in the tunnel and questioning the crew of the van. The robber was described as white, in his 30s with a goatee beard. He was wearing a light blue shirt, dark blue trousers and had a helmet over his head.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Alderson, of Sussex police, confirmed that officers were investigating the possibility that the robber had posed as a security guard in order to steal the cash. He said the incident happened at a busy time of day at the airport, which has about 140 shops and 28,000 staff.

In February this year, two men hijacked a British Airways security van in the airside area at Heathrow's terminal 4 and fled with £4.6m in foreign currency.

A month later, two men posing as security staff held up a security company van that had just unloaded containers from a South African Airways flight in the airside area of terminal 1. They stole two cash boxes containing $3.2m (£2.1m).

Det Ch Insp Alderson said the robberies showed no similarities with yesterday's raid.