By Brad Rantayy
MIRI, June 17: An unemployed man, 41, was tracked down and taken into police custody yesterday afternoon to assist police investigation into a robbery which took place just three hours earlier.
He had allegedly robbed an Indonesian woman of her handphone behind an eatery at Jalan Merbau. He had approached the victim who was sitting alone and snatched her device before making his getaway.
The handphone, a Samsung J5, was worth about RM800.
According to Miri police chief ACP Lim Meng Seah, the victim had shouted for help but as there were few people in the vicinity at the time, the robber escaped.
Soon after, a Good Samaritan helped the victim to call her stolen phone in order to track down the culprit, but the call went unanswered, prompting him to send a text to the same number.
The Good Samaritan managed to convince the suspect that his crime had been recorded by CCTV and shortly after, he received a text message from an unknown number, informing him that the handphone could be found inside a room of a budget hotel. The information was subsequently passed on to the police.
Acting on the tip-off received, a team of police personnel was despatched to the budget hotel at Jalan Nakhoda Gampar and arrested the suspect at 12.30pm.
The suspect is being detained for questioning for the offence under Section 392 of the Penal Code for robbery. — DayakDaily
