WATCH: Duo jailed after guards threatened with machetes in terrifying robberies
Two men have been jailed after a spree of violent armed robbery attempts across the West Midlands and Staffordshire.
West Midlands Police officers have now released horrifying footage of a machete attack on a cash security guard after Adrian Treleven and Remelle Stewart were jailed.
WATCH: Machete attack on cash security guard
Treleven and his driver Stewart used increasing levels of violence as they targeted Loomis and G4S workers transporting money – but got away with nothing, despite striking three times.
It began on February 21, 2020, when a security guard carrying cash pulled up outside TK Maxx on Walsall's Crown Wharf Retail Park. The victim was walking back to his van after collecting money when Treleven, who was masked up, shoulder-barged him over.
The victim refused to let go of his cash box during the struggle and a member of the public rushed to his aid and helped the security worker fight him off. Treleven fled in a stolen Ford S-Max driven by Stewart.
Three days later, another guard had just made a collection from the Toby Carvery on Chester Road North in Sutton Coldfield. He felt Treleven grab him from behind and onto the ground. He held on to his cash box and managed to punch Treleven in the face.
Treleven raised his fists to fight the victim, as Stewart closed in in the getaway car.
The court heard Treleven shouted: “Drop the box!”.
When the victim refused, he ran to the car and shouted to the driver: “Run him over! Run him over!”
Stewart drove at the victim, who jammed backwards on to the van’s safety ledge before the car hit the van, and struck his leg.
The men drove off as the victim, who said he had never been so afraid for his life, used the cash box to hit out at the car.
Finally, the men struck at a third guard who had been working at Co-Op on Stafford Road in Huntingdon, Staffordshire, on March 10. Again, the guard was attacked from behind by Treleven.
The victim’s body-worn camera shows him lunging with an 18-inch machete, and the victim was left with a deep scratch to his arm. The pair fled empty-handed again.
An investigation by West Midlands Police’s force priority’s team pieced together the movements of the pair using CCTV and mobile phone data, and the pair were arrested.
At Birmingham Crown Court on January 11, Treleven, 26, of no fixed address, was given 14 years after admitting conspiracy to rob.
Stewart, 18, of Church Vale, Handsworth, was jailed for four years after admitting the same charge. He was said to be under the control of Treleven, and was just 17 at the time.
Detective Sergeant Tom Frenchum, from the force priorities team, said: “This was an appalling series of attempted robberies which left the victims in real fear for their lives.
“You can clearly see that as each attempt failed, they were becoming more and more desperate and so were resorting to increasing levels of violence.
“People working in the cash transport industry do a really important job and should be able to go about their work without being attacked, and these sentences reflect that.”
