Quick thinking security officer foils daring daylight robbery
By Alfred Sasako
QUICK thinking by a private security guard may have saved police hours of investigations following a daring daylight robbery in the cark park of the Hyundai Mall on the weekend.
Police appear to have recovered money and other personal items taken from a Rav4-look-alike Suzuki vehicle whose side windscreens were smashed, enabling entry into the vehicle.
A bag, said to have contained a large amount of cash as well as a mobile phone were allegedly removed from the vehicle. Police later recovered the items.
Martin Boliko, the private security officer who foiled the alleged robbery involving four youths – two girls and two boys – later told Island Sun it was the only thing he could think of – shutting the boom gates so that no one could escape.
“As soon as I found out what was happening I ran to the boom gate and let it down,” Mr Boliko of U’ra Village in Central Kwara’ae on Malaita said on Saturday morning.
That day’s routine started in the usual way.
But by around 09.30 that morning, the scene and atmosphere around the seaside building had changed as four youths – two girls and two boys – smashed their way into one of the vehicles in the car park in a daring daylight robbery attempt.
Boliko could hear commotions coming from the direction of the car park.
He left his other colleagues in the building and raced towards the car park. There, he found two of his colleagues engaged a youth who he said was trying to get away in an alleged stolen white Caldina, a station wagon.
The driver of the vehicle who was some distance away from the vehicle was shouting that someone was driving his vehicle away without his permission.
“By then two of my colleagues were already talking to the young man who was trying to drive away. When I realised what was happening, I raced to the boom gate and closed it so that no vehicle could get out,” Mr Boliko said.
It worked.
Police later arrived at the scene and apprehended four youths – the two girls hunched in the back of the Caldina and two young boys, one of whom was trying to carjack the car.
As the quads were driven away in a police van on-lookers booed the alleged offenders.
It is not clear whether any charges have been laid.
