A Yorkshire retailer escaped a violent attack when she told an armed robber to wait for her to finish a cup of tea.

Karamjit Sangha, owner of Sangha News and Booze in Hull, Yorkshire, had just accepted an early-morning newspaper delivery when the prospective attacker entered her store.

“He came in with a knife and demanded I give him all of the money in the till,” she told Retail Express. “At first I asked him what he was talking about – he told me again to hand over all of the cash. He was so angry.” Responding to his demands, Sangha told the man: “I’m having a cup of tea, you’ll have to wait.”

“Although he didn’t bother me, he did make his demands again,” she said. Sangha retaliated by putting down her tea and brandishing the knife she had used to cut open the newspapers’ packaging.

“He started shaking and ran away,” she said. “I called my husband, and we reported what had happened to the police.” Sangha, who said she has experienced an abundance of crime in her 19-year retail career, advised others to follow her lead if they were targeted.
“Don’t get nervous,” she said. “Don’t let them get you in a state – if they see that they are intimidating or scaring you, they will come back again and again.”

Sangha said it was important to prevent this from happening, as her family home is above the shop. “I checked outside the window to make sure he was gone before I did anything,” she said. “The police came in, took all of the evidence and offered me support. It’s important to have CCTV in your store – it definitely helped me.”

The robber, Stuart Gleeson, was jailed for five years.