The elderly woman who was being robbed was asked to be ‘understanding’ by the thief, “We’ve got to eat as well, you know.” This surprising encounter occurred in a jeweller’s in Torrox-Costa.

The lady, 78-year-old Maria Manuela García was dismayed when two masked men burst in unannounced – as if one was needed – “Hands up, this is a hold up.”

María made a reasonable request: take what you want, but don’t take the things that customers have brought in for repair or the jewellery that had already been sold but had sums outstanding. When the reply came, it was one that she wasn’t expecting.

“Madam, we’ve got to eat as well, you know.” Well, with the 130,000 haul, they were assured a feast or two, that’s for sure.

María Manuela had been standing in for her daughter, to whom the shop belonged when she received the ‘visit.’ Her daughter had had to take the granddaughter to the doctor, so there was Nan looking after the jeweller’s at five to six in Torrox Costa on Avenida de las Palmeras.

She was a little chuffed because she had just sold a slave bracelet, but unfortunately, the safe was still open. Four men in ski masks ran in, but there was no doubt that a skiing expedition was far from their thoughts.

María deduced from their short exchanges that they were all foreigners, as three of them emptied the shelves and display cabinets whilst the fourth hung onto her. Thanks to her forgetting to lock the safe back up after the recent sale, it was soon emptied as well.

Outside waited a fifth gang member in a black Fiat Leon, get-away car, which had been stolen in Málaga a few days before. The thieves obviously had a second car nearby, because the get-away car was found abandoned in Avenida del Faro.

(News: Torrox-Costa, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)