Police mum as robbery puts man in hospital

A man has been taken to hospital after another violent robbery in Melbourne.

A man has been sent to hospital following a violent robbery in Melbourne’s west allegedly committed by two people of African appearance.

Two men are alleged to have entered the Footscray home before 11pm on Wednesday with some reports saying they had knives and baseball bats.

“They were disrupted by the sole occupant, a man in his 20s, who was subsequently assaulted with an unknown item,” a police spokeswoman said.

The two men later fled and it is not known what was taken from the house.

“Both youths are perceived as African in appearance. No arrests have been made at this time and the investigation is ongoing,” Victoria Police said.

There was another aggravated robbery in Caulfield South after midnight where a 77-year-old woman alone in the house woke up to find a man ransacking her home. She escaped the house and called police before the alleged robber fled.

Both robberies were reported by 3AW’s Neil Mitchell yesterday before police issued statements.

The veteran broadcaster wrote in The Australian yesterday that he had discovered two previous cases where he reported burglaries despite police releasing no public information.

“Neither case was reported by the police media office until I asked questions. They claimed no operational reason for that,” he wrote. “So was it an attempt to manipulate information to calm the public? Was it ignoring reality for the sake of spin?”

Victoria Police told The Australian they release information to the media only if they think it will help the investigation.

“Using the media is just one avenue of inquiry that investigators can use,” police said.

The robberies follow a string of home invasions in the past couple of weeks in Melbourne as the city’s youth gang crisis worsens.

The Australian’s Newspoll yesterday shows two-thirds of Victorians believe the state’s Labor government needs to do more to tackle violent crime ahead of November’s election.

Radio personality Kate Langbroek spoke of her “anger” at police and the courts after she was left bruised by an attempted home invasion at her St Kilda residence on Wednesday.