Calls to Police Station unanswered as thieves steal millions worth of devices from store

Several smartphones and other devices, valued over $2.5 million, were stolen from the Smartphone Solution store at Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara, in the wee hours of Wednesday.

The owner of the store, Samuel Singh, 27, of Zeelugt, West Coast Demerara, told the News Room that two men broke into the store at 03:21 hrs. The store’s alarms went off after the shutter door was breached.

“We went home and the alarm go off. When we look, we see the camera and see two guys coming in.

“By time we reach, they break in the front and take away all the phones, laptops, tablets and left the normal chargers but took away the original iPhone and Samsung chargers,” Singh said.

Upon arrival, he said the store was ransacked but he noted that only the items placed in glass cases were stolen.

Video footage seen by the News Room shows the two perpetrators – one wearing a hat and another with a cloth wrapped around his head – shuffling around the store taking items from the glass cases and throwing them into a bag.

At one point, one of the thieves went into a room at the back of the store but then exited empty handed. During this time, his accomplice was filling the bag with phones and electronic tablets.

By 03:23 hrs, the perpetrators removed the cameras. Singh shared a video on his Facebook page, expressing frustration with the Police for not having any patrols and not answering the phones when calls were made throughout the course of the robbery.

Singh said that the Police were not able to catch the men in the act because they never answered the phone calls made immediately after the alarms went off. He explained that he was later told that the phone at the Leonora Police Station was down.

“Since we left the house, we call the Police and the phone off. When we go to the store, we check [and] we gone back to the station.

“When we reach, we tell them ‘whole morning we ah call’. He [a policeman] said, ‘What you want we do if the station phone isn’t working?’  I tell he that is no answer to give nobody because whole morning we call,” the young businessman said.

Singh said this is the first time that he has experienced a break-in at the store.