The inside story of Adelaide BWS bottle shop robbery

A video of brazen thieves plundering a bottle shop went viral, but what it didn’t show was the battle to stop them afterwards when members of the public gave chase. Watch the latest video.

To the unsuspecting viewer the video showed shoppers standing by as four masked robbers fleeced a bottle shop of three trolley loads of booze.

But what the video of a brazen robbery of BWS Burton at Springbank Plaza did not show was the three members of the public who battled tooth-and-nail to thwart the theft.

Cindy Waterman-Hurst was in the Burton store when the four young men burst in, faces covered, with three trolleys.

She said she was looking for a bottle of wine when one of the thieves bumped into her with their trolley.

Without an apology from the person responsible, she followed them into the fridge – where they were loading their trolleys with alcohol – and started asking for an apology.

Cindy Waterman-Hurst fights with one of the thieves. Picture: TikTok

Looking into their eyes and seeing they had their faces covered, Mrs Waterman-Hurst realised what was happening and set about stopping it.

First, she followed them down the aisle, then she grabbed one of their trolleys.

“I was putting the trolley back trying to stop them from getting out but nobody would touch them,” she said.

“I got the last one as he was trying to get out of the store and I had hold of the trolley.

“I was holding it tight and said, ‘you aren’t going any further’.”

Mrs Waterman-Hurst was described from the video as being bumped by a trolley while waiting in line, but the reality was she was actively fighting against one of the thieves to stop.

She said, while locked in a trolley tug of war with one of the boys, she looked him in the face and earnestly asked, “what are you doing?”

Such was the fight she was putting up the thief was left floundering by his friends before one of them returned to the scene to wrest the trolley from Mrs Waterman-Hurst.

The quartet then took off past the Burton Community Hub and through a carpark straddling Burton Park and Burton Park Football Centre.

But the vigilantes were not done yet.

Amid Mrs Waterman-Hurst’s arm-to-arm combat, Aaron Linwood had noticed the commotion and begun to follow the four thieves while alerting SA Police.

“I was sitting in a car with my mate and we saw them coming out of the shop, I didn’t chase (because) they weren’t moving very fast,” he said.

“I followed at a safe distance and called the police.

“One of them got away really fast with a trolley but the other three were slow.

“As we were getting closer another man in a car sped up to us and blocked them off with his car and we managed to secure two trolleys as the kids ran off.”

A man uses his car to pursue the thieves. Picture: Supplied

Aaron Linwood walks behind the thieves while calling police. Picture: Supplied

The man in that car, who knew the area well, was alerted to what was happening by Mrs Waterman-Hurst.

From where he was he made a beeline to the sports field car park, driving past the three straggler thieves and taking out one of their trolleys with his car.

Sensing defeat, the thieves abandoned their trolleys – which Mr Linwood estimated were full of about $700 worth of booze – and ran away.

Mr Linwood and the man in the car then returned the two trolleys to the BWS.

An SA Police spokeswoman said an investigation into the perpetrators of the theft was continuing.

Following the brazen theft, Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association SA chief of staff Jordan Mumford told ABC Radio the union had been calling on employers to post security guards at crime hot spots.

A spokeswoman for Endeavour Group, which owns the BWS bottle shops, said the incident was now in the hands of police.

“Our priority, as always, is the safety and wellbeing of both our customers and our team members,” she said.