Luxury watch store manager who took his own life ‘offered life savings’ to bosses after £1.4m raid, court told

My heart goes out to him and his family. Poor bloke was told he’d not put up enough of a fight by owners who chose not to have insurance because it cost too much. Left him in the store alone whilst they were in the US and blame him when the inevitable happens. Horrible. 🙁

There’s more to this story.

Random man in meeting making accusations，after which he transfers his life savings over，then offs himself？ Something shady going on.

Why didn’t the store have security with stock worth that much?

“*Junior Kunu, 30, and Mannix Pedro, 37, are charged with conspiring with others to commit the robbery after watches worth more than £1.38 million were stolen from the south-west London jewellery store last year.*

*Office manager Oliver White, 27, was put in a headlock and tied up during the robbery, the court heard. Jurors were previously told that Mr White died by suicide the next day ‘as a direct result’ of the incident.*

*Shop owners Conor Thornton and Joe Riley were in the US at the time of the incident but immediately returned to meet Mr White on May 26, prosecutor Edward Brown KC said. The watches were not insured because a burglary four years earlier had made insurance ‘in practical terms impossible – either actually not possible or the premium was so high as to be prohibitive’.*

*He added: ‘It must have been a pretty intense meeting. Oliver White was plainly extremely upset by everything that had occurred, to such an extent that he even transferred the maximum he could – some £14,000 – from his savings account containing his life savings. Money he had saved up for a house for he and his girlfriend, and he sent the money over to the owners of Kettles’. Mr White and his girlfriend ‘had been together for seven years and had been planning a life together’.*

*A transfer was made by email at around 4.30pm on May 26, Mr Brown said, adding that the funds could not be transferred by the bank for technical reasons but Mr White was not aware. Another man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in the meeting. Mr White later told his girlfriend the man had accused him ‘of not putting up enough of a fight’, the prosecution said. This was ‘something apparently the others, his friends, did not disagree with, and this devastated him’, Mr Brown added.*

*’As a person he had always been careful with his money, he was not in debt, never borrowed money, never gambled, paid his credit card bills on time, paid into a pension – there were no even curious transactions in his financial affairs – nothing’.*

*Not long after transferring the £14,000 he went missing and stopped replying to texts or calls, the prosecutor said. That evening his body was found by a friend who had been searching a wooded area Mr Brown used to visit as a child, jurors were told.*”

As much as the story is sad a whole lot more must have been going on for this to result in a suicide… Then again, working with bosses and keeping friends like that might well have made him depressed in the long term.

Their penny pinching to not insure their own goods and then proceeds to pin the blame on their employee who isn’t being paid to fight off burglars when the inevitable happens is sickening. Shame on the store owners 

The thieves and the business owners so called friends of this guy.. absolute scum of the earth all with blood on their hands.

No insurance, no proper security.

The employer knew the risk and clearly accepted it.

And they had the audacity to pressure this guy into handing over his savings.

I am so angry. You have no insurance, no security, and you expect a single employee to fight (with what?) against possibly armed men? And then blame the employee?!

“Mr White later told his girlfriend the man had accused him “of not putting up enough of a fight”, the prosecution said.

This was “something apparently the others, his friends, did not disagree with, and this devastated him”, Mr Brown added.”

Yeah easy to say that when you’re not in danger!

Just as an FYI, the phrase “committed suicide” is no longer appropriate and widely discouraged by mental health services as suicide is no longer illegal, therefore they did not ‘commit’ a crime.

It can also cause upset to those affected by it. You should use “death by suicide”, or “taken their own life”.

Bosses are absolute fucking ghouls, that poor bloke

I just feel disgusted about the owners as well as the thieves.

I worked as a checkout operator at a local supermarket back in the late 1980s. At periods during the day we would have a ‘drop’ where all the paper money from the tills would be collected and put in a movable green safe before it was taken to a safe in a locked office.

As the nearest male to the office, if I wasn’t serving a customer, I would be strapped to this safe and wheel it up the line of tills with the supervisor. The idea was if someone tried to steal the green safe the strap would come away and an alarm would sound.

The supervisors always made of point of saying to me: ‘if anyone does try to steal it, you don’t do anything to stop them. You just let them take it.’