Police make headway in fight against armed robbery

The Police say they have made headway in solving a security puzzle of increased shootings and robberies in the city in the last few weeks.

Police spokesperson Fred Enanga made the revelation after police arrested two more suspects, bringing to three the number of people arrested in the city since the police launched a crackdown on the criminals last week.

Enanga named the suspects as Juma Onen and Denis Mwangushya.

He said they managed to arrest the suspects after a gun recovered from a one Stanley Muluta early last week matched three crime scene shootings, one of which was where two mobile money agents were killed in Zana two weeks ago.

The agents were identified as Harriet Nalwadda, 33, the owner of a mobile money shop and her employee Maureen Nakabubi, 25. Both were residents of Zana, Makindye Sabagabo.

Muluta was arrested last week at Masanafu, a city suburb.

"This has been a successful operation. We believe we are going to disrupt their criminal activities," Enanga said of the operation that started on June 9.

The operation, he said, resulted in the arrest of Muluta, who is said to have worked alongside Onen and Mwangushya in the criminal underworld.

He said the suspects are also linked to an incident in Kimaanya in Masaka district, where a Toyota Harrier registration number UBA874W was robbed and later sold in South Sudan.

"They also managed to ambush a Turkish man in Katwe and robbed him of his bag thinking it contained money on May 4. On May 17, the same group attacked Sanyu Nalukwago, a resident of Kitende and robbed her of sh16m after trailing her all the way from Natete," Enanga said.    

The group is also linked to another robbery in Natete where Denis Mwesigwa, a city businessman, was attacked and robbed of sh610,0000. That robbery resulted in the death of Rafael Walugembe, a university student, who was hit by a stray bullet fired by the suspects.

"Our ballistic experts managed to match data collected from the scenes with the weapons recovered from the suspects. We are still scrutinizing data collected from other scenes like the shootings in Mbale where one of our officers was killed to see if they are also connected," he said.

Enanga said by the time they arrested the men, they had been targeting another businessman in Mutukula near the Uganda-Tanzania border.

"They put emphasis on mobile money agents because they believe they don't have enough security," Enanga said