A Bradford barmaid told today how she saw undercover police arrest a man in connection with the gunpoint kidnapping of a family by a bogus househunter.

Emma Wilson, 22, said plain-clothes officers were waiting in The Inman pub, Lumb Lane, Manningham, Bradford, to make the arrest last night.

Miss Wilson, who has worked at the pub for two years, said: "There was a group of men in who I'd never seen before.

"They were drinking on one side of the pub. At about 9.45pm they ran across the pub and picked up this bloke who'd been coming into the pub for about a week.

"He didn't resist and they shoved handcuffs on him and took him away.

"As he left the pub he looked back at us and said 'See you later, girls'."

The operation was carried out by police from Weetwood station in Leeds where the man was due to be questioned later today about the abduction and robbery.

It came only hours after police had named and released a photograph of a man they were hunting in connection with the incident.

Businesswoman Marilyn Rowell, 46, her two children and a family friend were abducted by a man who had made an appointment to view her £250,000 house in Horsforth on Wednesday.

The man returned that evening and sat for an hour claiming to be waiting for his wife, who he said was staying at a nearby hotel. Ms Rowell, eventually agreed to drive him to find her. She got

into the family Volvo with her two youngest children, Gabby, 11, and Gregory, eight, and a friend, Dawn Birks, 39. The man sat in the passenger seat.

She was then forced to drive at gunpoint to her crystal wholesale business in Horsforth and fetch £60 from petty cash before going to a bed and breakfast in Headingley to collect the man's suitcase. He then ordered the terrified hostages out of the car and drove off. Police said the arrest was a planned operation and armed resource vehicles were at the scene but no firearms were used. The arrested man was not armed.

Miss Wilson said the man first visited the pub last Thursday. "He said he was Canadian and was travelling round," she added. "I didn't take much notice of what he said but he came in every night and would buy people drinks. He spent loads of money.

"I don't know what he was doing around here. He said he was staying in a hotel in Leeds. I didn't pay him too much attention." She added: "One night he'd been chatting to one of the girls and her daughter and I heard him ask if he could go back to her house."

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