A taxi driver was arrested on Tuesday for stealing his day-shift colleague’s money from the cab’s storage box, claiming that the cash had been stolen by “thief,” Public Security Police (PSP) spokesman Wong Wai Chon said at a regular press conference on Wednesday.
The 30-year-old suspect is a local man surnamed Cheang who told the police that he works as a night-shift cabbie.
According to Wong, two taxi drivers reported to the police on Christmas Day that 700 patacas that belonged to one of them had vanished from the storage box of their taxi, while both of them had lost their taxi driver IDs which they had left in the cab. They told the police that one of them worked as day-shift driver while the other one worked as night-shift cabbie.
They also said that there was another night-shift driver. The day-shift driver told the police that the money and the driver IDs had vanished after Cheang took over on December 23.
When PSP officers scrutinised nearby CCTV footage, they confirmed that Cheang was the only one who got into the taxi parked in Rua de D. Belchior Carneiro at the time of the shift change in the night on December 23.
PSP officers told Cheang to report to a police station on Tuesday. Under questioning Cheang admitted to stealing the money out of greed. He also confessed after stealing the cash he fabricated the scenario that a thief had got into the taxi and stole the money. That’s why he threw away his fellow cabbies’ IDs to let them believe that the money had been stolen by a thief.
Cheang has been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP), facing a theft charge, according to Wong.
This undated handout photo provided by the Public Security Police (PSP) on Wednesday shows a Public Security Police (PSP) officer escorting the suspect to the PSP headquarters in Zape.
