Hero cops : 'He pumped the gun and said he would blow our heads off'

An off-duty police officer has described the moment an armed robber pumped a shotgun and threatened to blow his head off.

Sergeant Iain McIvor was in Newark on January 6 last year, celebrating a recent promotion.

He had been out in town with colleagues, as it was a central location for many officers who work in the Lincolnshire force.

Having just left the Prince Rupert pub shortly before 5pm, the group heard screaming and shouting.

Sergeant McIvor and Sergeant David Wilson, ran to Andrew Michael’s Jewellers, on Stodman Street, where they saw what they believed to be a robbery in progress.

Sergeant McIvor said: “I got to probably a metre from the door when the guy with the shotgun starts coming out towards us.

“In that situation there’s not a lot you can do. Our intention was to detain him. His intention was to get away.

“He pumped the gun and said he would blow our heads off. So we started to have ‘a bit of a chat’ where I told him to drop his weapon.

“Pretty much at that point the other guys came out waving their lump hammers, and they were threatening to use them.”

Sergeant McIvor said as the situation was unfolding so quickly, he had little time to react but continued to tell the gunman to drop his weapon.

Neither officer knew at the time that the gun was, in fact, an imitation.

The officers, who were carrying no equipment, slowly backed up in the narrow passageway from the shop door to the pavement.

Sergeant McIvor, also known as Mac, said: “It was one of those situations where if we had run off, then something worse could have happened. There was still the public to deal with.”

Sergeant Wilson said: “They pushed us at a certain point. They just wanted to get away and get into the car.

“We still didn’t know if anyone in the shop had been hurt. We didn’t know what had happened inside there. We didn’t know if someone had been assaulted.”

Gang members got into a getaway car but Sergeant McIvor caught the man carrying the gun.

“The guy with the gun tried to get into the car but it was like a moment in time where everything seemed to slow down, so I grabbed him in a bear-hug to get him out of the car.

“The car was taking off and it was dragging me along with it for about 20-metres.”

Sergeant Wilson added: “I could see Mac with his legs on the outside of the vehicle. The people in the car kept shouting ‘let go’.”

Eventually Sergeant McIvor could not hold on any longer.

After the gang had sped off, Sergeants Wilson and McIvor, along with their off-duty colleagues, made the area safe before Nottinghamshire officers arrived.

Sergeant Wilson said: “When something like that happens, a lot of times instinct takes over. Even after the robbers left your police training takes over with things like victim care.

“We immediately went into the shop and asked the staff if they were OK.”

Sergeant McIvor said: “The staff were terrified. We were dressed in jeans and trainers and they maybe didn’t know if we were part of the gang. We actually went back to see them about a week later, in uniform, to see if they were all right.”

They spent two hours at Newark Police Station where their jackets were taken for forensics, before calmly resuming their night out.

The officers, both based at Grantham Police Station, said they were a little embarrassed by their nominations for bravery awards, adding that officers across the country would have done the same thing.

Sergeant McIvor said: “I don’t see it as heroic, it’s what officers do all the time.

“I would like to think that we would do it all again if we needed to.”