CCTV footage captured the moment two armed men held up a service station with an imitation pistol and a knife, with the pair later tracked down by police and jailed for their roles in the “frightening” incident.
In video footage, a man wearing a red face covering and black beanie hat points a firearm at a cashier and marches towards the counter of a service station in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.
A second man, wielding a knife and also with his face covered, gestures to the cashier and drops an empty holdall over the counter.
The second man then leaps over the counter, as the first continues to point the imitation handgun at the cashier.
The pair flee the premises with cigarettes worth more than £900 just two minutes after they arrived.
Essex Police said the men were captured on CCTV entering the service station in Cambridge Road at 10.35pm on September 27 last year, and were filmed leaving at 10.37pm.
The force said that one of the men – Grant Bolden – was identified following a CCTV appeal, and that officers gathered further evidence through their investigations.
Essex Police said Bolden, 39, of Hunters Way, Saffron Walden, and 44-year-old Jack Knight of Flitch Green, Dunmow, both admitted to robbery at an earlier hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court.
The force said Knight was sentenced on March 7 to four-and-a-half years in prison, and Bolden was sentenced on May 9 to seven years in prison.
Police said Bolden was also sentenced for separate offences committed in May 2023 – making threats with a knife and a racially aggravated public order offence, having become aggressive when asked to pay a taxi fare.
In the service station incident, Essex Police said Knight was seen to point a firearm at the cashier.
Officers who searched his home recovered a black handgun – later established to be an air gun – matching the description of the weapon used in the offence.
Clothing worn by Knight and Bolden while they committed the offence was also recovered.
Accomplice Bolden brandished a knife as he leapt over the counter to demand money and cigarettes.
The footage shows the pair leave the shop taking cigarettes worth more than £900 with them, police said.
The force issued a CCTV appeal in October last year and Bolden was identified as one of the people pictured.
Bolden called police to confirm he was one of the people pictured in the appeal, but at that stage denied being a part of any robbery offence.
Further work by officers, including analysis of the clothes the suspects were seen to wear, identified both Bolden and Knight as the perpetrators.
Analysis of mobile phones attributed to the pair showed incriminating messages further revealing their involvement.
During one exchange, texts on a phone attributed to Bolden saw a number of packets of cigarettes offered up for sale, reading: “I want £300 for them all. For 44 packs that’s a bargain.”
Detective Sergeant David Crane, of Essex Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit, said: “This was a deeply unsettling and frightening incident for the victim, who had no reason to believe the pistol pointed at their head wasn’t a viable firearm.
“Knight and Bolden used weapons to target a service station, all in the name of stealing cash and cigarettes.
“The seriousness of their offending was matched by the determination of our team to find them and bring them to justice.
“We were able to irrefutably link both offenders to this offence, leaving them with no choice but to plead guilty.
“They will both rightly spend a considerable term behind bars.”
