Kolonaki heist nets cash haul
Robbers absconded with a van full of cash after pulling off a well-organized heist in an affluent and heavily guarded Athenian neighborhood, police said. The robbery began at 8.25 a.m., after an armed man, posing as a street cleaner, forced a Wackenhut security guard carrying cash out of a BNP Paribas branch in the central Athens area of Kolonaki into a parked security vehicle. The armed man then forced the Wackenhut guard and the security vehicle’s driver, aged 28, at gunpoint to drive the cash-loaded van to Zappeion past the guarded residencies of the prime minister and the president of Greece. There the robber knocked the two men unconscious using the butt of his gun, then handcuffed them to the van. The culprit and an accomplice took four cash bags – the amount of which is not yet known – from the security van into their own car and drove away. Police launched a manhunt for the suspects but without fruit as of late yesterday.
