Albert St. businessman robbed by cop and accomplices…

An Albert Street businessman was robbed near the entrance of his home. At about two o’clock Monday morning, fifty-three year old Madhu Babani, the proprietor of Swamy’s Boutique, arrived at the entrance of his Albert Street home. Near the entrance of the nearby alley, three male persons came up to him, one of them armed with a handgun. The men then searched Babani’s pants pockets and took fifty Belizean dollars and four thousand five hundred US dollars, and a gold chain from around his neck. Police were on mobile patrol at that hour and they saw several men, one who was holding a firearm, get inside a white car before it drove off. A high speed pursuit proceeded into the south side of Belize City and ended on Tigris Street. One of the men jumped out of the car and escaped, but the other three occupants were apprehended; twenty-eight year old Jeremy Moore, a police officer from Marage Road in Ladyville, twenty-one year old Albert Alexander Clother, a fisherman of Lindo’s Alley, and thirty-two year old Shane Budran, a laborer of Wagners Lane.

Police Corporal Moore initially claimed that he was buying a hotdog on Albert Street when he was abducted by two men who forced him to join in the robbery. The investigating officers did not believe the story, so all three men, including P.C. Moore, were arrested. Moore, Clother and Budran were charged with Robbery when they appeared in Magistrates’ Court today. PC Moore was slapped with the additional charge of Abetment to Robbery. Chief Magistrate Margaret McKenzie remanded the men in custody until March twenty-fourth. Twenty-one year old Karl Heusner Junior, a boat captain of Berkeley Street, was also charged with Robbery in absentia since he is at large.