Police bustcar snatching syndicate

The police have arrested members of a car snatching syndicate operating within the Accra metropolis.

The suspects are Ibrahim Muntari, 29, Stephen Waje, 30, Evans Nuerttey, 27, Abubakari Saddique, 29, and Prince Ayittey, 28.

Also apprehended were Theophilus Kofi, 28, and Nii Okine, 49, both businessmen, for dishonestly receiving snatched cars, which were sold to them.

Their modus operandi was that a member of the gang hires the services of a taxi cab to an unknown destination and in the course of the journey the other suspects join and later overpower their victims and rob them of their cars and other valuables at gunpoint.

The Accra Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Fredrick Adu Anim, who disclosed these to the Ghanaian Times in Accra yesterday, said the suspects after snatching the cars dismantled them and sold them as scraps.

He said Muntari and Waje were arrested on March 8, 2020, at Pokuase by the Amasaman police patrol team for possessing firearms without lawful authority.

DCOP Anim said the two led the police to arrest Nuerttey Saddique and Ayittey at Odumasi near Olebu and Mankrong near Suhum in the Eastern Region, on March 18, 2020.

He stated that investigations revealed that after robbing their victims, the gang either re-sprayed the cars and sold or used them to facilitate their robbery operations.

“Further investigations revealed that Muntari and Waje were the robbers who attacked mobile money operators in the Alhaji Tabora, Lom Nava, Pokuase and Fan Milk Areas,” he added.

DCOP Anim said Waje and Nuettey have also been identified as suspects, who snatched a KIA Picanto taxi cab with the initial registration number GC-2094-19 at gunpoint at Sowutuom, Accra.

The Police Commander said the cars were sold to Kofi and Okai, adding that police on April 3, arrested the buyers at Suhum and retrieved five cars from them.

“The two other cars were also impounded during the arrest of the five member gang,” he said.

He said the suspects had since confessed to the crime, adding that, “Seven cars and two locally manufactured pistols have so far been retrieved from them by the police.”

DCOP Anim said the suspects have since been put before an Accra circuit court and remanded to reappear in court.

He called on members of people who have fallen prey to car snatchers to contact respective police stations for identification of their vehicles.

BY ANITA NYARKO-YIRENKYI