Dairy owners under siege

The Patel brothers came for a better life, to get an education for their children. But they’ve found themselves on crime’s frontline. The dream has died. Richard Walker reports.

They were two masked teens – one 16, one 17. They came fast. They had parked a stolen car around the corner from the dairy, the windows of which had been boarded over after a ram raid. So the two guys appeared at the doorway without warning, seemingly out of nowhere. One leapt straight over the counter for cigarettes. The other, without pause, headed straight for the shopkeeper standing in an open doorway through to the storeroom. They carried machetes.

Dairy owner Sandip Patel is a karate black belt, and his training kicked in. He grabbed his assailant, getting in close, one arm around the neck, making the machete useless. The guy dropped his weapon and Patel started punching him. One of them, he could have dealt with, but two was impossible. The second intruder came at him, slashing him, a blow to the top of his head, blows to his upraised forearm, to his side. Blows everywhere. Blood everywhere. In the melee, Patel managed to grab a fistful of hair. But he was no match. It was over in minutes. Even as they fled, a dazed Patel, his skull fractured, staggered after them, falling once, getting up, falling again.

Four years later, the physical scars are no longer visible, but the trauma remains. So does the fear. Patel and wife Pinky have boosted security at their Hamilton East dairy, Emm Jay, with a cage-like gate across the entrance, a locked door through to the back room, glass across the counter. But they are scared, every day scared. Sandip works a day job as a machine operator for PGG Wrightson, and relieves Pinky at 3pm. During that time, he repeatedly phones her, checking she’s OK.

Ten times a day, he phones. Then she heads home, and in turn worries about him.

She hasn’t been attacked but has had to use the fog cannon twice. Each time the person was unarmed, but still it was scary.

The two teenagers who attacked Sandip before fleeing Emm Jay with $20,000 of cigarettes and $10,000 in cash were caught. He recalls that the older one, who turned 18 the following week, went to the district court, while the younger went to Youth Court. He thinks the younger one got a fiveyear sentence and the older a sevenyear prison sentence, serving two or three years.

Sandip could have been killed by his assailants. Just over a week ago, that was the fate of another Hamilton man he knew, Janak Patel, in an Auckland dairy. The death of the 34-year-old has brought a wave of angry solidarity from shop owners, almost all of whom have their own stories to tell of falling victim to masked robbers. Sandip knew Janak, and wonders what will happen to his family. He was a ‘‘very gentleman guy’’.

The Patels have run Emm Jay for 11 years after Sandip followed his brother out to New Zealand from India. It was good when the Patels arrived from Gujarat. But now India is safer, Sandip says.

‘‘We are not safe any more here, you know, not safe,’’ Pinky says. ‘‘Not at all.’’

Sandip says other parts of the world also see this sort of violence, but not as much as New Zealand. The crime rate is rising ever higher, and the

Government should be controlling it, he says. The law needs to change. If someone knows how to attack, to rob, then they’re not teenagers, he says.

The Patels have brought up two daughters in Hamilton. They’ve worked long hours, seven days a week. Sandip gets up at 4.30am during weekdays, and 6am weekends. He gets to bed around 10pm or 10.30, so the pace is incessant. And Pinky still has plenty to do at home after she hands over the shop at 3pm.

The older daughter works in sales and has a degree in microbiology from Otago. The younger has just finished school and next year will study psychology and criminology at Auckland. It’s the immigrant’s dream, to see your children set up in your new country. But the Patels want out.

They would sell their business if they could, but there are no buyers. If they do sell, they will be going back to India. ‘‘Definitely. I’m going back to India, I don’t want to stay here,’’ Sandip says.

Chirag Shah, however, will stay. He and his wife opened their north Hamilton superette three years ago. They had worked in dairies, and wanted to start their own business, so they knew what they were doing. The dairy is on Borman Rd, and the city is set to fill in around it, providing plenty of future custom.

The doors are open, but behind that openness is some careful security. Their new shop was done over three times in the three months after opening, all after hours. None were ram raids, with bollards in place from the start. The guy that did the first two, back to back just before Christmas 2019, was given a two-year sentence; the youth who did the third one was released.

Most striking of the security measures Shah and his wife have taken is a white metal grille separating the counter from the rest of the shop. But there is also a fog cannon, roller doors, the necessities to run a superette in 2020s New Zealand. It doesn’t come cheap – more than $20,000, not including the bollards.

The grille was installed too late to prevent a further robbery, this one just before closing when Shah’s wife and their two young children were in the store. She activated the fog cannon and retreated to a safe spot, leaving the two robbers, big guys, to take the cash register and cigarettes.

Shah has been robbed at knifepoint himself, about 10 years ago when he was working for someone else. It was a kid on his own, and Shah gave him what he wanted. ‘‘But it wasn’t organised. Nowadays it’s fullon organised.’’ They turn up well prepared, masked and hooded, with a stolen car, and leaving no trace. And if they’re caught, they know how to get out of it.

‘‘It’s a theory but I’m pretty sure that there is someone on the top, teaching them what to do. And these kids are either doing it for fun, or actually want to get into this kind of stuff.’’

The level of organisation was the unexpected element for him and his wife. It meant they needed more security than they had expected, and sooner. Thieves tried again earlier this year but couldn’t get in.

Like everyone else spoken to for this story, the Shahs closed their store last Sunday so they could attend a protest vigil at The Base for Janak Patel. It was good to support it, Shah says. There has to be a break in the cycle, he says, and offenders need consequences. It’s human nature that if they can offend and get released, then they will keep doing it. ‘‘I don’t know why it’s really hard to understand for lawmakers or judges.’’

He’s seen videos of break-ins where the offenders – youth or adult – don’t care. He hears in the news that there is less crime, but the stats are definitely wrong, he says. ‘‘We see that every day.’’

House building is in full swing near the Shahs’ superette, and at smoko time the tradies come in to buy pies and energy drinks. They’re universally a polite crew, exchanging pleasantries with Shah.

They wear fluoro vests, shorts and workboots; at one stage there are a good half dozen in the shop, resembling nothing so much as a flock of brightly coloured birds working a patch of ground.

‘‘It’s pretty sad when they need this, eh?’’ says an older guy indicating the metal grille.

‘‘When I initially put that up everyone was laughing,’’ says Shah. ‘‘I was like, what could we do?’’

‘‘I suppose you’re not allowed to smack them in the head with a baseball bat, are you?’’ says the customer, with regret.

‘‘We are not that kind of person, hitting back, but we have to keep ourselves safe,’’ Shah says.

‘‘Fair enough.’’

Shah came to Hamilton 14 years ago to study sport and exercise at Wintec. He’s got a full-time job with Les Mills and does what he can at the shop. But his wife is the ‘‘heart’’ of the business, he says.

Like the Patels, they came from Gujarat, though they didn’t know anyone when they arrived. They’ve made plenty of friends since. It’s like a family bond, Shah says. He’s visited plenty of other places in New Zealand but Hamilton feels like home. Community events are a big part of that, and the most popular one is Navratri, a ninenight dance festival usually held in September.

Shah likes the challenges of the business, but says he and his wife sometimes wonder about the hours they put in. At the moment, they’re facing a squeeze that has nothing to do with the robberies. The cost of everything is going up, but they can’t pass on too much to their customers. Their margins are shrinking, and he doesn’t know what next year will bring, though the couple have plenty of ideas.

One thing seems certain, and that is where they will live. ‘‘I want to be around friends,’’ Shah says. Others are considering moving to Australia because of the cost of living crisis. ‘‘But I’ll stay in Hamilton.’’

Sandip Patel’s older brother, Sanjay, came to New Zealand first, in 2004. He thought New Zealand was the best place in the world. He heard it had zero crime. But it’s a lie, he says. Sanjay now thinks India is much safer, and is eyeing a return.

In the Crosby Road Superette, which he bought in 2008, he keeps close at hand the front page of the Waikato Times with the story of his brother’s ordeal. ‘‘That’s my memory.’’

As the eldest brother, he is responsible for the whole family, he says. That means when Sandip was attacked, he installed the protective cage-style gate at the entrance to his brother’s dairy. He also installed one at his own. It’s locked by default, and only he or wife Minal can open it remotely. They can monitor who comes in, but he says you never really know when someone might still pull a knife or a gun once they’re inside.

They’ve been robbed seven or eight times, including at knifepoint, and were ram raided about 10 years ago. They recently installed bollards and have a fog cannon, which Minal has had to use once.

Things are scary, and getting scarier, Sanjay says.

It was all right to start with, but rising cigarette prices have driven crime. The problem for an individual shop that removes cigarettes is it risks losing customers to cigarette-selling shops. He thinks the Government should tax cigarettes less, or ban them. ‘‘Ban it now, not like by 2025, by 2030. Ban it now. Why not?’’

He and Minal are working 12-hour days, seven days a week. ‘‘And that’s the reward we’re getting,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s like, stay in [the] scariest atmosphere. So that’s [the] Government’s reward?’’

He thinks people don’t know what’s going on because the Government controls the media.

New Zealand has given them one good thing: Their 27-year-old son has a career as an electronics engineer in Wellington. But even he thinks they should leave New Zealand.

There is a further factor in a potential return to Gujarat, to support their mother, who lives on her own. They were unable to get a visa for her to come out when Sandip was attacked, and have been unable to get her out since.

Sanjay points to the shop’s doorway with its metal bars. ‘‘I am paying heaps of tax. And I’m in the prison. Criminals are outside. So Government wants criminals outside and taxpayers inside the jail . . . I think.’’

The Patel brothers came for a better life, to get an education for their children. But they’ve found themselves on crime’s frontline. The dream has died.

Another day, another Hamilton dairy. You see three guys coming fast. They’ve pulled up outside, four of them, and three are heading for the door. It’s 9am, Sunday, there are customers in the shop.

Move, quick, get out the back. They smash the glass outside, and then they’re in. You’ve got a fog cannon, but you’re new to this, and instinctively try to flee.

But the masked intruders are quicker. They catch you, hold a hammer to your head, demand everything you’ve got.

One customer flees. Others near the back stay rooted to the spot. In three to four minutes, it’s over. The robbers have cleaned you out of cigarettes and cash, and swiped chocolate as well. Your dairy’s seven-year, robbery-free run has just ended. October 9, 2022, is a date you won’t forget.