Ladies bag gives robbers away

The Kwesimintsim Police have arrested two ex-private security men after they stormed the offices of an MTN scratch card agent at Agona Nkwantah in the Ahanta West District of the Western Region and looted cash and property.

The suspects made away with several packets of scratch cards running into thousands of cedis, plus a cash of GH₵5,000.00.

However the desire of one of the suspects to dispossess the shop attendant of her hand bag too, proved his undoing as it gave him up for arrest.

Evans Mensah, 26, and Francis Arthur, 29, were said to have entered the shop and held up the sales girl, searched drawers and made away with the money.

Arthur also picked a ladies’ bag belonging to the sales girl before taking to his heels.

But the sales girl managed to free herself and shouted for help, screaming they had snatched her handbag.

Bystanders saw him with ladies bag and accosted him, before he confessed to robbing the shop. He claimed the money was with Evans Mensah, who took a different direction to escape.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic, District Commander Supt. Ahmed Issah Yakubu said the suspects were ex-private security men, and that Mensah, a resident of Dansoman in Accra, had previously visited Arthur.

He said during his visit, Mensah claimed to have run out of cash and therefore called somebody in Accra for assistance to enable him return home.

“The money for his transport was sent using MTN Mobile Money, the suspect then went to the same shop to collect the money and left for Accra,” he said.

The police superintendent said last Friday the suspect returned to the region with a locally manufactured pistol and told Arthur that there was money to be made.

The two, according to Supt. Yakubu, went to the shop a day before the robbery to survey and plan the attack.

The District Commander said when the suspects got to the shop early in the morning, the shop was not opened and so they waited.

The sales girl later appeared and opened the door for the day’s business, following which the two entered the shop and at gunpoint asked her to surrender all monies.

Francis escaped to Accra but was arrested by the police and has since confessed to being part of the robbery.


Picture & Story: Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Kwesimintsim
Daily Graphic/graphic.com.gh/Ghana