Robbers armed with imitation gun and knife raid service station in CCTV footage - watch the encounter below

Shocking CCTV footage shows the moment two men armed with an imitation firearm and a knife robbed a service station.

Jack Knight, 44, and Grant Bolden, 39, entered the shop at 10.35pm on September 27 2023. Knight was seen to immediately point what looked like a handgun, but was later established to be an air gun, at the cashier as he moved towards the counter. Bolden brandished a knife as he leapt over the counter to demand money and cigarettes. The pair took cigarettes worth more than £900 from the shop in Cambridge Road, Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex.

On October 17, police issued a CCTV appeal on social media and Bolden was identified as one of the people pictured. Further work by officers, including analysis of the clothes the suspects were seen to wear, identified both Bolden and Knight as the perpetrators.

Knight and Bolden each admitted a charge of robbery at Chelmsford Crown Court. Knight, of Flitch Green, Dunmow, was jailed for four-and-a-half years on March 7. Bolden, of Hunters Way, Saffron Walden, was jailed for seven years on May 9.

Bolden was also sentenced for separate offences committed in May 2023 – making threats with a knife and a racially aggravated public order offence.