About a month ago, a low-profile businessman from England was sleeping alone at about two in the morning in his house in Ban Tai when three armed men wearing masks broke in and awakened him at gunpoint.

The poor guy was, of course, scared to death. The armed men asked him where his vault and cash were. But since he didn’t have any – cash and vault — in the house, he could not give them what they were asking.

He was hit in the stomach forthwith. There was a time in that ordeal that he though he was a goner. The robbers could have easily thought he was simply being stubborn and not forthcoming. It was perhaps impossible for them to believe that a foreigner like him – and a businessman at that – wouldn’t have a stash of hard cash in the house. They musn’t have heard about ATM cards, checks and credit cards – or they would have not barged into the house in the first place expecting to find sacks of foreign currencies.

Just as he thought, they were not – thankfully — hardcore robbers. When they realized he was probably telling the truth, they simply cuffed him and, to teach him a lesson to always have cash in the house, locked him in the toilet for good.  Of course, they left after helping themselves to a few valuables in the house, including the car he had borrowed from a friend.

When the robbers were gone, he somehow managed to free himself and took a cab to seek help from a friend in Bangrak. They reported the incident to the police, who promptly issued an island-wide alert for the robbers and the getaway vehicle he had unwittingly provided.

The car was recovered shortly, abandoned in an isolated area. True to form, the bungling robbers left a mobile phone in the car. This was truly one for the books.
In no time, the robbers fell one after another – thanks, in no small measure, to the police, the village headman and to the guy’s neighbors who contributed to the identity of the suspects.

This was another telling example of how crime could be solved speedily if both police and the people in the community were to help each other. After investigation, the police had found out that the three, notwithstanding their clumsiness, were part of a more organized robbery syndicate pouncing on foreign residents.

Once again, let’s give the police a well-deserved pat on the back.