A group of Beitbridge residents on Tuesday night outfoxed members of a cross-border armed robbers gang soon after they hit a shop and made off with about $3 000 in a dusk attack.
BY OUR CORRESPONDENT
The daring robbers, wielding a revolver, fired five shots into the roof of the shopf and ordered occupants of a supermarket just 400 metres from a Police Base to lie down before helping themselves to the cash. They carried some of the money still tucked in till drawers.
But they were, however, not so lucky as they met a more daring public who stood up to them despite their being armed.
An alert security guard noticed that the gang’s revolver had run out of bullets as the robber with the gun kept pulling the trigger with nothing coming out.
The guard convinced the public the robbers had run out of ammunition and encouraged them to take them on. This apparently jolted the public into action and, sensing danger, the robbers took to their heels splitting directions.
A young boy, oblivious of the dangers, tripped one of the armed robbers and the crowd pounced on him while his accomplice ran towards a group of people coming from the opposite direction, who threw stones at him.
The other two robbers cleverly enticed their pursuers with money, dropping notes and disappeared into the night as their pursuers stopped to pick the money.
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“They [public] outran us…we were four and split in different directions, but the gunner and me were not lucky and we were caught,” admitted one of the robbers who identified himself as Never Mlambo of Chipinge.
In an interview from his hospital bed where he was admitted after suffering injuries from the public’s instant acts of justice, the other robber who had been armed with a pistol, Prince Dube said they brought two firearms for the “job”, although only one was loaded.
“We ordinarily rob border jumpers and cigarette smugglers along the [Limpopo] river and we live in Musina [South Africa],” he said.
He said they often made incursions into Beitbridge and went back to Musina after every hit. Mlambo suffered a fractured skull and was rescued by police who arrested him and rushed him to hospital, while the other one identified only as Obert is now in police custody.
A worker at the supermarket, Shelton Kani said the robbers arrived just after 7pm and one stood by the door while the other fired the gun and barked instructions, while two others ransacked the tills and other cash points.
“They surprised us and ordered us down; they took away drawers of the tills that contained cash and stashed some of the money in their pockets before walking away,” said Kani, adding the supermarket lost $3 500 from its Ecocash point and other selling points.
Kani showed reporters the roof of the shop which had some holes drilled by the discharged bullets and said police, whose base is 400 metres away, only came after 20 minutes — long after people had already “dealt” with two of the robbers.
The robbery-prone HaMbedzi area of Beitbridge is in the predominantly unlit section of Dulivadzimu, where thousands of people live in houses that do not have electricity, water or sewer reticulation.
Police yesterday referred all questions to the national office in Harare, where phones went unanswered.
