Abu Dhabi: A woman has been arrested after attempting to rob a money exchange in Abu Dhabi by threatening the staff with a gun that turned out to be a plastic toy. The suspect had worn a veil in a bid to avoid recognition.
Dressed in a white head-dress and a black cloth around her face and gloves, the Filipina suspect, A.L.R., 33, was also found to be carrying a knife when she targeted the money exchange on Hamdan Street on Thursday morning, Abu Dhabi Police revealed on Sunday.
The woman had reportedly covered the toy gun with cloth so that others would be unable to tell it was a fake.
Upon being alerted about the attempted robbery, specialised police teams rushed to the scene. The area was cordoned off to prevent the suspect from fleeing and she was searched by policewomen after being arrested.
The Abu Dhabi police released this video of the arrest:
The suspect had been staying in the country on an expired visa. The police report stated that she had disguised herself so that she would be unrecognisable on CCTV cameras and wouldn’t leave fingerprints.
A.L.R. had threatened to shoot employees of the Al Badr Exchange if they did not meet her demands by handing over the money. She confessed during interrogations that she had hit on the robbery plan to pay off a Dh140,000 debt, police said.
The suspect claimed to have bought the toy gun from a nearby grocery store. She said she purchased the abaya and her face and head covering from a local store.
Colonel Dr Rashid Mohammad Borshid, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, said that the suspect was found to be carrying a knife hidden in her bag but police officers were able to disarm her before she could use it.
The money exchange’s Executive Director, Adel Ahmad Khamis told Gulf News: “We thank the police for their quick intervention. They were at the scene within two minutes of pressing the emergency button. Our employees resisted the robber’s attempts even though fear was a natural feeling at the time for anybody exposed to something like this regardless of the nature of the weapon. We have taken extra precautions after the incident in terms of internal training and extending that from theoretical to practical.”
On her way to run an errand, mother of two M.K. said she noticed that the entire area had been cordoned off by police. “They had been treating the situation very seriously because nobody could come within the area by any means. The police’s precautionary tactics are understandable,” she said.
Col Borshid condemned the use of local attire as a disguise to commit the crime.
