A Christchurch dairy owner turned the tables on an armed robber by hitting him in the face with a cardboard display unit.
Opawa Rd dairy owner Kamlesh Patel was stocking up freezer goods at 9.50pm on Saturday when a young, Caucasian man carrying a pump-action firearm stormed into the shop.
The man shoved a plastic bag into Patel's hand and told him to fill it with money from the till.
"He was trying to make me afraid," Patel told reporters. "But I was trying to pass some time to figure out whether the gun was real or plastic."
He then dodged behind the pie warmer and picked up a 1.5-metre-high cardboard stand dotted with plastic hooks holding voucher cards. "So I banged it on his face and tried to snatch the gun and came at him again."
In the back of the dairy, wife Neeta Patel was watching the struggle on a security television.
"I could see Kamlesh going back, back, back, and then I could see a big gun waving, so I started yelling. I opened the door with a saucepan in my hand, but he pointed the gun so I closed it again."
The shop's alarm was blaring. The gunman took some tobacco but got no money in the three or four-minute ordeal.
Security footage showed the man running from the shop chased by Patel, who suffered a scratch to the top of his head.
"Definitely he will not enter any of the dairies in Christchurch like that again,” he told The Press.
Constable Grant Cowan, of Christchurch South police, said the robber left in a silver four-door sedan that was parked on the zebra crossing outside the diary. Police were keen for any sightings of that vehicle.
"There's not that many people who are prepared to scrap with a firearm-wielding robber, but this guy did," Cowan said. "He wasn't afraid. Usually we say it's not worth the risk ...All it takes is panic, and when the finger is already on the trigger, it's usually the dairy man that's coming off worse."
Anyone with information on the Opawa Rd robbery should call Cowan on (03) 363 2576.