TWO members of an armed gang who stole £43,000 from a Darwen bank were jailed yesterday.

Lee Tansey, 33, of Pegwell Drive, Salford, was one of three violent raiders who smashed the door of Lloyds TSB, Duckworth Street, with a manhole cover on June 5, 2008.

The bank had just closed to the public around 4.30pm but staff remained inside.

Two of the men carrying a crow bar and a sledge hammer demanded the safe be opened as another grabbed money containers.

They fled with a total of almost £43,000 and jumped into a stolen Audi, later found abandoned.

The gang also targeted Lloyds TSB in Elland, West Yorkshire, on June 18, 2009 and HSBC, Marsh, Huddersfield, a week later and got away with around £450,000 in total.

Tansey was jailed for 11 years for the Darwen and Elland raids.

Rickton Mark Henry, 31 of Merridge Walk, Salford, was jailed for eight years and eight months for the armed robbery of the HSBC bank.

Blood left on the smashed door of the Lloyds TSB bank in Darwen, where Tansey cut himself on the way in, was part of the forensic evidence.

Tansey and Henry were later extradited from Spain on European arrest warrants.

Detective Inspector Warren Stevenson of West Yorkshire Police’s Crime Division said: “These men did everything they could to try and evade capture, even committing crime across Force boundaries.

"But thanks to some good detective work, some sharing of intelligence between Forces including Lancashire Police and the Serious Organised Crime Agency, they were located in Spain and brought back to England under a European Arrest Warrant to face the courts.”