An 81-year-old gun-shop owner thought he was going to be killed when he was kidnapped by two men who robbed his store.
WA Police are on a manhunt after Barry & Sons Firearms on Clapham Street, Beckenham was raided on Wednesday evening.
It was just another regular night for Barry Lathwell, when he finished his day at work and locked up his store.
He was on his way home and had stopped at a red light when a van hit his vehicle from behind.
According to Mr Lathwell, a man emerged from the van, apologised and asked to exchange details around the corner.
"I got out of the car and he started coming to me, and another chap jumped out of the car as well, I didn't realise there were two people there," Mr Lathwell said.
"They grabbed me, and I thought 'What the hell is going on', and they said, 'We know you got a gun shop and we're going to rob it'."
The men, who Mr Lathwell said spoke in a foreign language to each other, handcuffed the store owner, cable-tied his legs, blindfolded him and threw him into the van.
"They said, 'We're going to kill you and do you in unless you [let us] into your shop'," he said.
"I thought 'I'm done, I'm gone, what else would you do?'.
"It was totally unprecedented, I didn't think this sort of thing happened in Australia."
When the men couldn't find handguns at the store, Mr Lathwell said he was beaten with an iron rod.
"They came back and were quite agitated because they couldn't find any handguns and they gave me a welt on the leg there," he said.
The men forced him to open the safe, The men again threatened to kill him if he did not hand over the handguns, forcing him to open "this big 30-tonne vault that cost us $100,000 to put in after our last incident".
In a short window of opportunity, Mr Lathwell managed to lock the men out of his store and quickly hit the duress alarms to alert police.
He said officers arrived shortly after, but the masked men had already fled the scene.
According to Mr Lathwell, handguns are extremely valuable on the black market.
"Some of those handguns are worth up to $10,000 each, what we sell for $700 or $800, on the black market it would worth $10,000 or more … so it's like little gold bricks to criminals," he said.
Mr Lathwell described the ordeal as frightening and said it has left him completely shaken and distressed.
Police are urging anyone who was around Clapham Street, Albany Highway and Kenwick link on Wednesday evening, or who have dash cam footage, to contact Crime Stoppers.
