By Bill Bates, News Correspondent
On Monday evening, shortly before 5 pm, the Mount Ephraim Police Department received a call that some type of cash register had been thrown into the Haddon Lake at the Valley Road overpass and was submerged in the water.
The police arrived and confirmed that there was a cash register and an empty till in the water below. The police then notified the Camden County Communications Center (Alarm room) to dispatch the fire department to retrieve the equipment as it was in several feet of water and was unable to be retrieved from the waters edge.
The police were curious to see if they could lift any finger prints from the register or if they could find out if the register had been part of the numerous \”Beverage Throwing Bandits\” convenient store robberies that have been recently occurring in the South Jersey Area. These bandits have been robbing convenient stores by throwing hot coffee at the cashier and grabbing the money from the register. Sometimes the robbers even took the whole cash register and disposed of them later, if they were unable to open it at the time of the robbery.
The Mount Ephraim Fire Department arrived with water boots and rescue rope to make it down the steep embankment. The register and till was placed into bags to preserve the evidence. Just as the fire department finished successfully retrieving the equipment, the alarm room advised the units at the Haddon Lake that they were receiving several calls of a two car motor vehicle accident (MVA) on Kings Highway in front of the Sacred Heart Church.
The Mount Ephraim Police and Fire Department\’s then shifted gears and responded to the MVA. The units arrived to find one vehicle overturned on its roof in the east bound lane of Kings Highway and a small pick-up truck sideways in a driveway. The truck was hit from the rear driver side fender causing it to go up a driveway and through a temporary fence that was surrounding the New Walgreen\’s Construction Site. Both vehiclesâ received heavy damage and had to be towed away.
The pick-up truck was parked and was not occupied at the time of the accident. The overturned vehicle had two passengers that amazingly extricated themselves from the wreckage. Both passengers had no apparent injuries when checked out by members of the MEPRI EMS duty-crew.
That register was later confirmed to be involved in a burglary in Bellmawr and detectives are working on the case Chief Dobleman also added.
date of story Feb. 27, 2007
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