Fleeing cable robber plunges into pit

Hamza M Sengendo, Staff Reporter

A salesman part-timing as a robber plummeted into a pit while running away from security guards. He stood trial on Monday.

The 47-year-old Asian defendant and a fugitive accomplice used a knife in trying to steal electric cables from a villa under construction in Al Safa on the night of Feb.25, according to Al Barsha Police Station records.

The robbery scheme went awry after a security guard shouted at them. The accomplice dashed out and disappeared. The defendant was dodging the guard when he plunged into a pit. The guard pinned him.

He refuted the allegations before Judge Habib Amir Awad at the Dubai Criminal Court. The judge set April 29 for the ruling.

In prosecution records, the Egyptian guard narrated that several days before the incident, he was on duty guarding his employer’s property when he and his colleague noticed robberies targeting properties of other people.

“At around 10pm on Feb.24 we spotted a vehicle stopping near our property’s premises. We suspected it but we did not go to ask its inhabitants the reason they pulled over. We continued guarding the property.

“At around midnight I asked my colleague to patrol with me around the project for fear intruders might access it and carry out a robbery. We saw a light inside the villa. I shouted that ‘Come outside!’” he said.

The defendant rushed out through the front door and ran trying to dodge the guards. He landed in the pit. “I seized him and asked him whether he was alone. He told me he was with two accomplices.

“We entered, searched the villa and failed to find them. I think they escaped through the rear door,” said the guard adding that he contacted the police. “The defendant confessed before police officers.”

An Emirati lieutenant testified, “I rushed to the scene in Safa valley. Cables had been cut and others hanging from damaged walls. The defendant told me he was with someone who managed to escape.”