Catania: They robbed merchants, 3 Catanese reported

They constituted a close-knit group of "manolesta" three: catanese, a 42 year old man and two women aged 29 and 40, surprised the other day and reported for aggravated theft by the Carabinieri of the Catania Ognina Station.

This time the trio, already known to the police for having committed crimes against property, he had chosen as his victim the owner of a shop in via Messina, a 63 year old from Catania, who when she saw the three enter her shop, certainly didn't think they already had a plan to steal her bag.

Instead, the criminals, as emerged from the investigations carried out by the Carabinieri, acted according to a tried and tested script which included that the 40-year-old acted as a "lookout" while the 29-year-old, under the pretext of looking at some items for sale, distracted the shopkeeper's attention, thus leaving ample "room for manoeuvre" to her accomplice who, in the meantime, would have taken care of grabbing the bag, usually left behind the cash register by the shop employees.

This time, though, the three did not get away with it because the victim immediately noticed the theft and reported the incident to the Carabinieri who immediately started the investigation.

The reconstruction of the facts was carried out by the men of the Carabinieri through the Examination of CCTV footage of the area who, around 18.30 pm, recorded the arrival at the shop of the younger girl and, subsequently, that of the two accomplices on board a Fiat Panda.

As in a well-established script, therefore, that day too, each of them played a very specific role and, while the girl pretended to be interested in buying some objects, thus engaging the owner, the other woman acted as a "lookout", standing in front of the window. The man, therefore, had plenty of time to spot the owner's bag, grab it and hide it under his shirt, then sneak out.

Having understood the gang's modus operandi thanks also to the images extracted from the videos examined, the investigators immediately began the search for the three accomplices. The images, in fact, allowed them to clearly identify the license plate of the vehicle, thus allowing the investigators of the Arma to trace the user of the vehicle.

The checks were therefore concentrated on different areas of the territory until, the following day, the car was finally traced in via Solferino. The vehicle was therefore immediately blocked with the three criminals inside, who did not have time to react. The three accomplices were then taken to the police station and reported to the Judicial Authority for aggravated theft.