Police have a new lead in their hunt for a "callous" gunman who shot two people during an armed robbery in Melbourne more than 30 years ago.
A balaclava-clad man armed with a handgun confronted two Armaguard employees after they collected the weekend takings from a cinema at the Chadstone shopping centre in Melbourne on May 16, 1994.
Police have reopened the investigation after receiving intelligence and are appealing for public help to identify the gunman, Detective Inspector Adam Tilley said on Sunday.
After the offender had ordered the guards to "get down, drop the money", the man shot one of the guards in the right ankle, and the bullet ricocheted into the other guard's shoe, Tilley said.
The offender then took the cash-filled bags and stole the two Armaguard revolvers.
A 40-year-old Doveton man who pursued the fleeing gunman was shot in the leg, shattering his femur.
The passerby had been "extremely brave … and heroic" to chase the man, Tilley said.
Carl Benjaminsen, the son of Armaguard employee Sverre Benjaminsen, said he was shocked when police recently contacted his family about the case, just six weeks after his father had died.
"One of the first things that mum found going through dad's possessions was a folder, which had news clippings about what happened to him that day," he said.
This "speaks volumes" about the impact the incident had on his father, he said.
"The frustration that he couldn't stop this, that so many people were injured, he was deeply upset that a passerby got shot, that his workmate got shot," he said.
"It really stuck with him, and I think he's carried that all the way through the rest of his life."
Tilley said a person had recently provided intelligence about the case to police.
"We've been able to progress the investigation, but we are still missing that piece of the puzzle," he said.
The gunman had dropped a cardboard box containing one of the stolen revolvers and a bag of cash, but escaped with a significant sum.
"Given the severity and the callous nature of this offending, we believe it to be unlikely this was either the first or the last time the offender committed an armed robbery," Tilley said.
"We've had a number of exhibits that were seized at the time and there's ongoing forensic testing."
The gunman had "got away with this for 30 years", Benjaminsen said.
"He's done a lot of harm to a lot of people - we haven't forgotten, the police haven't forgotten," he said.
"I would really like to see him give himself up and allow us to all get some rest … it'd be nice to finally see justice done."
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