Last updated May 2, 2019
A cell phone thief was in the wrong place at the wrong time when his stolen device rang whilst police were questioning him and the voice on the other end was that of none other than the legitimate owner.
Sgt Wayne Mystar, the public information officer for the Police Service, announced at the daily news briefing on Tuesday at the Police Administration Building in the Port-of-Spain that police approached a man from Diego Martin after they noticed suspicious behavior on his part. “Keen powers of observation by officers of the CID on patrol at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital detected a man acting suspiciously,” Mystar told reporters. “The officers challenged the man and began searching him.”
That was the point when the thief’s luck really ran out. A cell phone on his person began to ring at that very moment, and his reluctance to answer the device further increased the suspicion of the officers concerned. The police themselves answered the ringing cell phone, to find the legitimate owner of the stolen cell phone on the other end. “The police became suspicious and, on answering the phone, a voice on the other end indicated that the phone was stolen,” Mystar noted. Officers later established that the cell phone had been left by its owner in his vehicle in the car park of the hospital, from which it had been stolen.
The 21-year-old Diego Martin resident was later formally charged.