OLX SCAM: At around 1340 hours on Wednesday in Westlands, Joash Ombati saw a man being thrown out of a moving Toyota shouting “wezi wezi” (Thieves! Thieves!)
The officer said he was patrolling behind Villa Rosa Kempinsky and was standing by the roadside waiting to cross over to a hotel for lunch when the incident occurred.
Ombati said he saw commotion 20m from where he was standing. “I saw a gentleman with a black bag being thrown out of a vehicle as it sped towards me,” he said.
Ombati cocked his gun and asked the driver to stop, but he refused. “There was a taxi where I was standing. The driver told me the men are thieves and we needed to chase them. I entered the taxi and we followed them,” he said.
Ombati said as they trailed the two men, he shot at the white Toyota and its tyres were deflated. The vehicle went through Museum Road and followed the Parklands police station route.
As Ombati trailed the Toyota, he kept firing in the air to alert the officers at the station.
“I did not have time to get into the station to ask for back up. When the vehicle reached Mpaka Road, it hit a huge rock and stopped,” he said.
“I shot at the window and the occupants of the vehicle surrendered,” Ombati said.
He ordered the men to lie down on the ground as a crowd began gathering.
“A boda boda rider opened the front door and took the stolen money, but I went after him and recovered it,” he said. Ombati said he did not have time to count the money.
“Later, police from the station arrested the two suspects Sameer Abdulaziz Kassim and Peter Kavoi Musili. We realised the money was Sh.400,000,” he said.
The suspects are detained at Parklands police station. They face robbery with violence charges. Ombati said the complainant Amos Charo went to the station and reported that he had Sh.732,000.
Charo had come from Voi to Nairobi with the intention of buying cheap construction material from people he interacted with on OLX. Ombati urged Kenyans to venture into genuine business and do transactions in banks to avoid being conned.
“Let Kenyans follow the law to prevent such incidences from occurring in the future,” he said. Police reports indicate that the suspects took Charo to Westlands to meet a man whose only name was given as Patel.
“They then took the money and threw him out of the vehicle and drove off near NIC bank,” reads the police statement.