'If you don't show me where the safe is, I'll kill you!': Shrewsbury pub burglar jailed after threatening staff with a meat cleaver
A burglar has been sent to jail for a long time after breaking into a pub and threatening the manager with a meat cleaver, demanding: "If you don't show me where the safe is, I'll kill you!"
“Ashamed” Luke Pritchard, aged 27, climbed into The Boathouse in Shrewsbury through a window early one morning, confronting a cleaner before demanding cash.
We have launched free newsletters for Shrewsbury, Telford and Mid Wales. Sign up to the newsletter for your area here: https://plus.shropshirestar.com/news/local-hubs/shrewsbury/2026/02/06/sign-up-now-to-our-new-shropshire-star-newsletters-all-for-free/
He has been jailed for six years and nine months, after a judge told him the members of staff he threatened were “probably scared out of their wits”.
A remote Shrewsbury Crown Court hearing was told how the manager of the New Street pub, which sits on the banks of the River Severn, had locked up and gone to bed in the early hours of January 6 this year.
At around 7am, a cleaner arrived and about half an hour later, while he was mopping the floor of the gents toilets, he was confronted by Pritchard, who was holding a meat cleaver in one hand and a knife in the other.
Pritchard was “swinging” the knives at him. The cleaner took him to the manager’s bedroom, who came out to see what was going on.
Pritchard, wearing a face covering which kept slipping down, shouted: “Where’s the safe? I'm going to kill you if you don't show me where the safe is. I have six friends outside and they’ll kill you if you don’t give me the safe.”
The manager shouted to try and covertly make his partner wake up and call the police.
