Swedish Helicopter Raid

With the aid of a stolen helicopter, robbers broke into a cash depot in Stockholm and managed to escape with a large amount of cash on Wednesday.
Swedish Helicopter Raid
A police SWAT team inspects the roof of the G4S cash depot in Vastberga, Stockholm on Wednesday, after robbers used a helicopter to carry out a robbery at the cash depot. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images)
9/24/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/swedish_raid.jpg" alt="A police SWAT team inspects the roof of the G4S cash depot in Vastberga, Stockholm on Wednesday, after robbers used a helicopter to carry out a robbery at the cash depot. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images)" title="A police SWAT team inspects the roof of the G4S cash depot in Vastberga, Stockholm on Wednesday, after robbers used a helicopter to carry out a robbery at the cash depot. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1826077"/></a>
A police SWAT team inspects the roof of the G4S cash depot in Vastberga, Stockholm on Wednesday, after robbers used a helicopter to carry out a robbery at the cash depot. (Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images)
GOTHENBURG, Sweden—With the aid of a helicopter, robbers broke into a cash depot in Stockholm and managed to escape with a presumably large amount of cash on Wednesday.

At 5:15 p.m. a helicopter with three heavily armed and masked persons landed on the roof of the G4S depot of cash in Västberga, a district in southern Stockholm. They broke a window and entered the building, an act that sent an alarm to the Stockholm police. Six minutes later the police arrived on the site and heard several explosions.

The robbers fled from the roof of the depot with the helicopter, which had been stolen from a flying school several hours before.

Because of a suspected explosive at the police heliport, officers could not use their helicopters. It is the second time in two years that police helicopters have been sabotaged.

Thomas Bodstrom, chairman of the Justice Committee, was reported by Swedish radio as saying, “It shows that organized crime has further strengthened its foothold, and that this is an attack on the whole society and makes a mockery of justice.”

Sweden has three major security companies, including G4S. The company has invested half a billion Swedish kronor (US$72.2 million) in recent years to strengthen its depots’ protection. Nonetheless, it has now fallen victim to a robbery.

Swedish police say the pilot of the helicopter used in the heist must either have been extremely skilled or otherwise just lucky.

The robbers are still on the run.