The police arrested a man from the mainland last week for stealing a smartphone from a female student’s bag on the campus of a university in Taipa late last month, a Public Security Police (PSP) spokesperson said during a regular press conference on Friday.
The man surnamed Zhou in his forties told the police that he works as a salesman in the mainland.
According to the spokesperson, the student in her twenties, who is also from the mainland, left her bag at a sports complex on the university’s campus on February 28, but when she returned to pick it up 40 minutes later, she found that her smartphone worth 9,000 yuan (9,958 patacas) had disappeared from the bag and reported the case to the police.
After scrutinising the university’s CCTV footage and the police forces’ citywide CCTV camera system, PSP officers identified Zhou as the suspected thief, who was intercepted on Wednesday last week when he re-entered Macau through the Outer Harbour Ferry Terminal.
The spokesperson said that under questioning, Zhou, however, refused to cooperate, but the police decided to transfer him to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) after considering that there existed strong circumstantial evidence that he had stolen the smartphone.
This undated handout photo released by the Public Security Police (PSP) on Friday shows two police officers escorting the theft suspect to a police station in Taipa.
