‘Lunatic’ robs with toy gun, POS

Detectives attached to Lagos State Police Command have arrested a suspected armed robber, who disguised as a lunatic to rob people.

It was learnt that the 27-year-old man, Olayinka Ogundimu, was arrested at Anifowoshe Street at Ikeja.

The residents of Anifowoshe Street were said to have informed the divisional police officer in charge of Man Centre, who led his men to the scene and arrested the suspect.

Before he was arrested, Ogundimu was said to be going about the community during day as a mad man, while he goes out with his gang members to rob at night.

The suspect, it was also learnt, always goes about with a point of sale (POS) machine, which the gang uses to withdraw money from the victims’ accounts at gunpoint.

The police recovered a POS machine, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards, different SIM cards, banks’ tokens, a bunch of keys and live tortoise from him.

Ogundimu, who was paraded along with other suspected criminals, told journalists at the state Police Command Headquarters that a toy gun he was using for robbery was given to him by one John.

He said: “I am not a mad man, but I pretend to be a lunatic. It was because some residents of Anifowoshe caught me with live tortoise and the toy gun that was why police came to arrest me. I don't use the POS to collect at gun point.

“The POS and other things recovered from me, I picked them on the floor.”

But when asked which part of the state he found it, he could not give any satisfactory explanation. “Tortoise is an animal that can be found in anybody’s house,” he added.

But a police source said the suspect and his gang members were using the POS to withdraw money from the accounts of those they went to rob, if they did not have cash with them.

The source said the suspect was only pretending not to know what he was doing.

“But to our surprise, when the tortoise we recovered from him died, he was weeping profusely. It was at that point we discovered he was actually not a mad man.

“Immediately we arrested him, he quickly removed his SIM card from one of his phones but we swiftly collected the second phone from him. While at our station, people have been calling him. We are going to track those who called him to ascertain who they are,” the police source said.

The state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Imohimi Edgal, who paraded the suspect and others, said Ogundimu was a notorious armed robber who had been terrorising Ikeja and its environs.

Edgal said policemen from Man Centre were able to arrest the suspect through community partnership at Anifowoshe Street, Ikeja, where he disguised to be a mad man.

He said: “After keenly monitoring him, a POS machine, Sim cards, a bunch of keys, Techno phone, a tortoise, a wristwatch and banks’ tokens were recovered from him. He could not give a reasonable point, where he got them from.”

The commissioner said the suspect would be arraigned after completion of the investigation.