Grenade-Wielding Bandits Hit Budaörs Tesco

In one of the most audacious robberies in recent Hungarian history, four men with submachine guns and grenades attacked an armored car parked behind the flagship Tesco hypermarket in the Budapest suburb of Budaörs on Saturday night, making off with Ft 30 million (roughly €120,000). While details about the robbery remain imprecise, the police say that they received a call for help at 8:20 p.m., and that officers arrived on the scene within three minutes - and were quickly met with a hail of machine-gun fire, and at least one lobbed grenade.

According to an eyewitness interviewed by Origo.hu, a few minutes after 8:00 p.m. security guards ran out of the store and began shouting at the shoppers gathered in the parking lot. "They were instructing everyone to escape, to 'get lost,'" the 22-year-old unidentified witness said. "At this point, a police car appeared, and when the cops emerged from it, a shootout began," he said, adding that he did not know who started shooting first.

Meanwhile, according to a report on state news agency MTI, a security guard was wounded in the thigh during the attack, requiring surgery at a nearby hospital.

Colonel Jenő Szabó of the Pest County police said that, following the firefight, the bandits took off in a car and were pursued by the police, who found the car abandoned and on fire on a nearby street.

The armored car belonged to security company Group 4, which was the victim of a different sort of inventive robbery last week. Group 4 and the Pest County Police HQ are offering rewards of Ft 1 million each for information leading to an arrest in the case.