BY PATRICK MGBODO
THE Delta State Police Command is winning the war against insecurity in the state with its recent arrest of a syndicate specialising in snatching phones from unsuspecting victims in commercial tricycles [Keke].
The Police Public Relations Officer [PPRO], Bright Edafe, in a video he shared on X [Twitter] and Facebook, cautioned residents to be cautious and always hold their phones in their hands while commuting in public vehicles.
Edafe said the suspects were apprehended and searched along the Emmanuel Uduaghan Way [Summit] in Asaba where seven phones was discovered with them, a development which triggered suspicion.
‘’They were asked to enter the passwords of the phones, but they could not. Hence, the police took them to the office. Before they even got to the office, the owners of the phones had started calling’’ Edafe said, adding that most of the owners have come to claim their phones.
‘’When you see the police conducting a stop-and-search, they are not trying to make life difficult for anybody. It is because of reports like these, seven phones, five have been released to their owners’’ he said.
One of the suspects, identified as Oliver Osadebe, said he has been in the business of snatching phones before he travelled to South Africa in 2021 and returned to Nigeria in 2023, and continued the crime.
Narrating how the stolen phones were recovered from them, Oliver said, ‘’Police stopped the Keke man [rider], they searched me and they didn’t see anything. Then they searched the keke rider and recovered seven phones.
Another of the arrested suspects, whose name was not mentioned, said he just started the ‘phone-snatching business that very day he was arrested in Asaba, the Delta State Capital.
Meanwhile, an anonymous victim of the phone robbery, who spoke behind the camera, commended the police for the routine stop-and-search exercise by the police.
She said she was dispossessed of her phone along the Ezenei Junction axis of the state capital, adding that “one of them was coughing and acting like an imbecile. I was asking him to stop, but the other person [in the keke] asked me not to bother myself.
“He continued to cough intermittently as the Keke was moving. Then I asked the keke to stop because I wanted to get down. When I got down, I tried to bring out my phone from my bag, but it was no longer there, and the keke had zoomed off’’ she said.
