Dubai: Residents call cops to prevent 'suicide' attempt, foil robber's escape instead

A man thought to be attempting suicide by jumping from a window of a high-rise in Dubai’s Al Barsha was actually looking to escape after committing armed robbery in the building along with four of his accomplices, the Public Prosecution has learnt.

According to police records, passers-by spotted the 36-year-old Kyrgyz national standing on a window ledge of a high floor of the building in Al Barsha. Believing that was about to commit suicide, they called the police, but when the cops reached the spot the man had disappeared. They went up to the floor of the tower where the man was seen standing and found that the ledge he was spotted on was the window of an international technology company’s office.

The owner of the company said the man and four of his accomplices had broken into her office wearing Emirati national dresses and claiming to be from the cyber-crime department of Dubai Police. They shouted at the employees to drop to the floor and lay down on their stomachs. When she asked to see their IDs, one of the men pointed a gun at her, slapped her and threatened to kill her. They took away her phone and yanked her head down to the screen to unlock the phone with her face scan. They then forced her to provide them the password for a trust wallet-balance account that contained $300,000, tied her up and escaped through the window.

Police formed a team to solve the crime and investigations revealed that the gang members were are all in the UAE as visitors and had used rented cars to carry out their robbery. Using surveillance camera footage, police managed to identify the culprits and track the vehicle they used in the crime. Investigators located one of the gang members, who already had a UAE criminal record from robbing money exchanges in Dubai. He was arrested from an apartment in the Al Nahda area.

During interrogation, the accused confessed to participating in the crime along with four of his compatriots, with all of them escaping from the crime scene through the window. He said he came to know that the other gang members were planning the robbery and offered to join them. As he had been deported from the UAE earlier for committing robberies, he couldn’t enter the country legally, but sneaked in illegally through a neighbouring country with the help of one of the other gang members. The gang regrouped in Dubai and rented a car in which they changed into the Kandouras to pose as police officers. He said that during the robbery, the gang leader transferred a large amount of money from the trust wallet of the victim and gave him only, $15,000 in cash.

Suicide attempter turns out to be crime gang member Afkar Ali Ahmed