Cashier left terrified after fake gun raid at Black Country store
A bank cashier was left terrified after a robber burst into the branch she was working at and threatened her with an imitation firearm.
The cashier was working at the Britannia Building Society in Halesowen when Stephen Loftus and another man entered the bank.
She was threatened by the pair as Loftus held the fake gun in a plastic bag.
She handed over £5,000 to the robbers, who then got away.
During a hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court, prosecutor Mr James Dunston said the member of staff took four months off work following the incident.
He said: "The following day she felt sick and petrified when she saw a customer with a rucksack, and from there her health suffered dramatically.
"She took four months off work – she suffered from memory loss."
She also suffered from Bell's Palsy, a weakness or paralysis of muscles in the face, which Mr Dunston suggested had been brought on as a result of her experience although there was no evidence it was linked.
In another robbery three weeks before on July 30, Loftus and two people were involved in another raid at Santander in Bearwood.
Mr Dunston said Loftus and his two fellow robbers 'knew exactly' the situation at the bank.
He said: "It was an elderly man working on his own, and they must have known the layout of the interior very well."
The court was told that Loftus had been in the bank the day before to make a withdrawal.
During the robbery one of his accomplices leapt through a gap between the counter partition and ceiling before opening the coded lock door, when the second man went behind the counter and 'roughed up' the staff member, Mr Dunston said.
Loftus remained on the opposite side of the counter, during which he made a hand gesture to the cashier in the form of a gun, and smiled.
He then acted as the getaway driver.
In Loftus' defence Mr Andrew Jackson said the incidents did not involve the turning of alarms or use of balaclavas, or any surveillance.
He said: "It's very difficult to say this was a planned robbery."
He added: "Neither robbery was perpetrated over a lengthy period of time, as such threat of violence was mercifully brief."
Loftus, aged 34, of Hoarstone Close in Bewdley, was sentenced to six years for the first robbery and 10 years for the second, with the terms set to run consecutively.
He was also handed five years for possession of an imitation firearm, which will run concurrently.
The other men involved in the raids were never caught.
