PRESENT POINT POWER

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2007/06/08; Another bid to yank out ATM; Fadhal Ilahi Ab Ghani, NST

PETALING JAYA: The same gang which tried to steal an automated teller machine on Wednesday morning is believed to have made an attempt at another early yesterday.

The gang used the same modus operandi, tying a cable from the machine to a lorry and attempting to yank the ATM out of its fittings. Like Wednesday’s incident, the gang went away empty-handed. In yesterday’s 4am attempted heist, a group of men wearing ski masks attached a 5m-long steel cable to the ATM at a bank branch in Jalan SD13/2, Bandar Sri Damansara, and hooked it to the front of a three-tonne lorry. However, when the lorry moved off, the hook broke. A glass panel of the bank branch also broke, triggering an alarm, but the ATM was still attached to its fittings.ABOVE: The ATM machine failed to move, cable attached (BELOW) as the other end broke loose from Lorry

District police chief ACP Mazlan Mansor said the alarm alerted security guards who were guarding nearby premises. He said the guards and several customers from a 7-Eleven outlet chased the gang. However, gang members escaped on foot into a nearby housing area where a getaway car was believed to have been parked. The lorry was left about 50 metres in front of the bank branch. Mazlan said the bank’s closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera recording showed two men tying the cable to the ATM. Checks revealed the lorry was stolen several hours earlier from the parking lot of flats in Taman Cempaka, about 2km from the bank. The lorry driver, Osman Said, said he only realised his lorry was stolen at 6am when he wanted to leave for work.

"I looked for it everywhere. Then a customer at my sister’s food stall told me it had been used at a robbery in Bandar Sri Damansara," he said. Osman, who has worked for an electrical company in Kuala Lumpur for 13 years, said this was the second time a lorry under his care had been stolen. The first was more than four years ago at the same flats.

The similarities between yesterday’s incident and Wednesday’s attempted heist at the Kepong Industrial Park have led police to conclude that the same gang was behind both. In the incident at 5am the day before, the gang had dislodged the ATM, but the commotion alerted the public who contacted the police. The gang fled in a car when a police patrol vehicle turned up at the scene.