There was drama Tuesday morning along Kanu Street in the Nakuru town after an M-Pesa agent was robbed of Sh45,000, in what police suspected to be an inside job.
According to eyewitnesses, hell struck immediately the agent alighted from the bodaboda that ferried her to and from Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) in the town centre.
“This attack was planned by someone who knew every detail of how she operates because everything happened too casually for even passer-by to recognise what exactly was happening,” said Salome Wairimu, a chemist attendant at an adjacent shop.
She said majority of operators in shops within the same block were shocked when one of the gang members drew a gun before making way with the money, in a brown envelope using an on-waiting motorcycle.
“Somebody could think that the pair knew each other because of the way the gun man approached Muthoni (the m-pesa agent). Before we sensed anything, they had already taken the cash and it was her screams that alerted everybody that indeed she had been robbed,” Wairimu added.
Justus Opidi, a guard at a nearby shop said the two member gang was at the scene of crime for about 20 minutes and made him believe that they were normal customers who wanted to buy phone accessories in one of the shops within the building.
“In fact, the driver requested if he could park at one of the reserved spaced but I declined before going inside to bring the reserved sign posts,” he said.
“The young men were friendly and it was difficult to doubt them. I am still shocked,” Opidi noted, adding that law enforcers should be dispatched in major buildings within the town to streamline security this festive season.
According to Naftali Juma, an officer attached to Central Police station, who was manning the adjacent Equity Bank, it was unimaginable for the raid to be carried out in the manner it was facilitated without a possibility of an inside job.
He said that manning building hosting a variety of shops in the major towns had become a tricky affair in the recent past with workers colluding with gangsters to stage manage robberies with an aim of fleecing their employers.
“The robbery is a mystery in itself because if the suspects were at the scene of crime early, how possible is it that it was a coincidence that they attacked the lady just as she was entering the shop from the bank? Why not anywhere else to or from the bank?" he wondered.
He called on employers not to entrust anybody with huge amounts of money especially those they didn’t know well because such people were out to study them before striking.
The case was reported at the Central Police station, with police immediately launching investigations into the matter further calling on anybody with important links to the crime to help them make arrests.