Jeweller killed in latest gun culture ‘outrage’
A murder inquiry has been launched after an elderly woman was killed in a gun attack at a high-street jewellers in Arnold, Nottinghamshire.
Police said Marian Bates, who was in her sixties, was shot during an armed robbery at the Time Centre, a shop she owned with her husband Victor.
One of the assailants fired a handgun at Mrs Bates after she and her daughter Xante tried to apprehend the robbers.
Both robbers wore motorcycle helmets.
Mr Bates suffered wounds to her chest, and although ambulance staff tried to revive her outside of the shop, she later died in Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre.
The thieves made a getaway on a stolen blue Gilera Runner scooter, registration W86 WUT. They knocked down a pedestrian as they fled the scene, police confirmed.
Deputy Chief Constable Steve Ditchett of Nottinghamshire Police called on the public to come forward with “every scrap of information about gun carrying criminals” in the local community.
“My deepest sympathy goes to the family for the disgraceful events, it is one of the few times in my career with the police that has provoked such a sense of outrage.
“An innocent lady has lost her life as a result of criminal actions, in a tragic way.
“If this sounds like an emotional response, then I make no apology for that. Because it is an emotional response. I want to put people like this away, to get people like this out of our lives. I am sick of it.”
One of the thieves is described as white, male, around 5ft 4in tall and in his late teens or early 20s.
He wore dark jeans, a canvas coat and a peaked crash helmet with a luminous yellow design.
His accomplice was 6ft tall, assumed to be in his late teens or early 20s and described as “scrawny”, wearing dark jeans, trainers, a motorbike jacket and a helmet.
