A MASKED man yesterday ploughed a 4X4 along a busy north-east rail platform as police hunted down seven alleged car robbers.
Three cars were recovered and two 16-year-old girls, two women aged 23 and three men aged 17, 18 and 21 were all detained by police as a result of yesterday’s operation in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
Eye witnesses yesterday described seeing a man wearing a balaclava burst through a fence at Inverurie Railway Station in a blue BMW-X5 and “shoot down” a platform in the direction of waiting passengers at around 11am.
Later, a police helicopter was seen circling around Aberdeen as police hunted down further vehicles and alleged car thieves in the Northfield area.
Bill McGuinness, store supervisor at Inverurie Garden and Machinery Centre, was going about his warehouse duties when he saw the BMW tearing down the Station Road-side of the platform following an unconfirmed chase with police.
Mr McGuiness, 62, said: “I was just standing here and I heard this scratching, something being dragged along the ground. There’s these half whisky barrels on the platform, and the BMW was moving with one of them under it. That was the noise.”
The father-of-two, from Fisherford, added: “He went shooting all the way down the platform. I saw it stop. I could hear the sirens going on further off. I only saw one person running away. It’s just as well nobody was in his way.
“He was going at some speed whoever was driving.”
Minutes before the incident, Cheryl Rogerson, owner of Vanity, on Inverurie’s High Street, saw the BMW pass by her shop.
She said: “All I saw was the driver driving normally, slowly. The driver’s window was down and he was wearing a balaclava with a woman passenger. He came by the shop window at about 10mph, the street was jam-packed with traffic.”
Moments later, the driver was said to have been involved in a chase which ended with him abandoning the car at the railway station.
Ms Rogerson, 28, added: “I thought – ‘why is the window down? It’s cold outside.’ And a couple of minutes later police cars popped up everywhere. I thought maybe it had been a robbery.
“I’m really shocked about it, it’s something you don’t expect to happen in Inverurie. We were so lucky that no one was hurt.”
Police could not confirm if the man driving the BMW was one of the people detained.
In Aberdeen, the streets around Northfield’s Byron Square were the scene of another alleged manhunt as swarms of police cars – assisted by the police helicopter – flooded the area.
An Audi Q5 with a bash in its front end was seen being recovered from Deansloch Terrace at around 1pm following an alleged chase through the city’s streets.
A street resident described how he went out to the post office yesterday morning, and returned to see police cars and officers in his street.
He said the Audi had been “abandoned”, adding that officers appeared to be “looking for someone”.
Another man was walking to Byron Square to do his shopping when he saw a man in his 20s being arrested on Byron Crescent.
He said: “A helicopter came up beside the church, it came across from Dyce and was circling about quite low past me going in a different direction.
“He was a young guy and just as I came up the street this car pulled up beside him and a man and a woman, police in plain clothes, got out.
“I have been living here since 1973 and it was quite a surprise.”
The Audi and BMW, plus a Volkswagen Golf, were recovered by police following the investigation into stolen vehicles in the region.
A Scotrail spokesman said the Inverurie incident caused the cancellation of the 11.33am train from Inverurie to Aberdeen, with 27 passengers from the train offered taxis.