‘Event thieves’ invade public functions

‘Event thieves’ seem to be having a field day at public functions by robbing innocent guests of their precious items.

They mainly target high profile weddings, engagements, awards nights and big churches around the city to strike.

For those who operate in the churches, they worship together with the congregation and wait to raid those sitting close to them when they go for offertory or communion. The audacious ones also operate within car parks where they break into people’s cars or make away with them.

The alarming ones are those who mainly operate at weddings, engagements and parties. Known widely as ‘wedding thieves’, these category of people go to high profile weddings to steal from gift tables and liquor bars without the knowledge of the event organisers.

Recently, an event thief made away with cloths and cash presented to a bride at a traditional marriage ceremony at East Legon, a suburb of Accra. The bride, who narrated the incident to The Mirror, said some of her cousins spotted a lady carrying one of the pans containing kente and wax prints into a car but when they quizzed her she claimed the bride, who is supposedly her best friend, authorised her to keep the items in the car.

“This was false because I only asked some of my siblings to send the items my husband’s family presented to our parents’ bedroom. Therefore, I was shocked to hear that someone put most of the cloths into a saloon car and drove away,” she narrated.

A similar news broke in the media recently where one Emelia Appiah was reported to have gone to a bride's house on the morning of her wedding in April on the pretext of being part of the team to dress her up.

Inspector K. Nyadikor, who was the prosecutor in that case, told an Accra Circuit Court that Emelia was turned away because the bride was already dressed. However, she later followed the bride to the church where the wedding was taking place at South La in Accra and impersonated another woman who was part of the team in charge of the gift table.

Unfortunately, she managed to deceive the church clerks who gave her access to the gifts, including envelopes containing a total of £5,000 in cash. Emelia is believed to have used a similar tactic on several occasions, including one wedding where she impersonated a wedding planner.

Apart from stealing at weddings and churches, others have pitched camp at the National Theatre, Accra International Conference Centre among others to steal during educational and entertainment shows. It is, therefore, not surprising that the quiz mistress for the 2017 National Science and Maths Quiz was robbed of her bag containing valuable items immediately after the final edition of the competition.

As of the time of going to press, Dr Elsie Effah Kaufmann, the quiz mistress, had not found her bag. She was heard on air pleading with the unknown person who stole her bag to return the items in the bag.

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, Dr Kaufmann said she only needed the items in the bag returned because they were very important to her.

“I have not gotten the bag yet but interestingly, somebody dropped off the wallet that was inside the bag at Legon at the School of Engineering Sciences,” she mentioned.