STAFF working at a travel agents were threatened with acid by a convicted bank robber.

Lloyd Kieran Jones, 38, carried out attacks on two travel agents while out of prison on licence.

Hereford Crown Court this week heard that Jones entered Miles Morgan Travel Agents in Ross-on-Wye just after staff had finished cashing up for the day.

He approached Patricia Sayce and demanded “change, change, change and euros”.

The court heard that Ms Sayce assumed he wanted to buy Euros and she informed him that the shop had cashed up for the day.

Jones pushed a note under the counter glass, took out a white bottle containing a blue liquid and said: “It’s acid, I want the euros.”

Jones then shook the bottle and threatened to throw it over another staff member, who was sitting at the front of the shop and unaware of the situation.

Ms Sayce gave him €700 from the safe and he fled, taking the note, bottle and cash.

Police officers were called on February 17 of last year and Jones was caught a week later, when he was recognised after CCTV was released of a subsequent robbery on February 19 in Bridgewater, Devon.

There he had made off with £2,800 in mixed currencies after threatening staff at a TUI shop with what he claimed to be a bomb.

Heath Edwards, defending, said that Jones, from Glynneath, South Wales, had pleaded guilty to both robberies in Devon and Hereford and, although he had made threats, had not carried a bladed weapon or a firearm.

Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins gave Jones a four-year prison sentence.

It will run concurrently to the 10-year sentence he was given last March when he was jailed by Swansea Crown Court for four other robberies – which included one in a bank.