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A MACHETE and knife-wielding gang about to rob a Liverpool pub were foiled by quick-thinking police officers.

A car pulled up outside the Halfway House in Woolton Road, Childwall, at 3.25pm yesterday and four armed men got out.

As soon as they went in, they were captured by passing police.

Plain clothes officers had coincidentally been in the area carrying out an anti-burglary and robbery operation.

They received a tip-off that a robbery was about to take place at the pub opposite Hope University.

The officers spotted the gang about to use their weapons and pounced, arresting three of them.

One of them ran away and is being hunted by detectives.

A machete, along with several knives, were recovered, along with gloves and headgear used to protect their identity.

The car used by the offenders was found to be stolen from the local area.

The three men have been detained on suspicion of conspiring to commit robbery and are being quizzed.

Det Insp Paul Roche of Merseyside police said: “This was an example of good proactive police work.

“These people entered the premises but they were intercepted before they could do anything.”

Nobody was hurt during the incident and high-visibility patrols have been stepped up in the area to provide reassurance.

Management at the busy south Liverpool pub, which also has a popular carvery restaurant, declined to comment.

But one local told the ECHO: “We couldn’t believe that they would be so brazen as to try a raid in the middle of the day.

“That part of Childwall is not the area of Liverpool where you’d expect to see blokes wandering round with machetes.”

THE ECHO

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