A 43-year-old woman is re­cov­er­ing in the hos­pi­tal af­ter gun­men pre­tend­ing to be po­lice of­fi­cers shot her in her sleep ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said the woman was at her Riv­er Val­ley home along Dump Road, Ari­ma, around 2.30 am when she heard voic­es shout­ing, “Po­lice!” Mo­ments lat­er, gun­shots rang out and she felt burn­ing sen­sa­tions in her right thigh and left foot.

She was tak­en to the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal by am­bu­lance, list­ed in sta­ble con­di­tion, and lat­er trans­ferred to an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty.

Of­fi­cers from the North­ern Di­vi­sion’s CSI Unit re­cov­ered 51 spent shells at the scene, in­clud­ing 9mm and 5.56 cal­i­bre rounds. A neigh­bour­ing house al­so sus­tained dam­age, with sev­er­al win­dows shat­tered in the hail of gun­fire.

Cops search for sus­pect in­volved in string of rob­beries

Po­lice are search­ing for a man who car­ried out two rob­beries which oc­curred just hours apart on Tues­day morn­ing in Cunu­pia.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said around 4 am, a 54-year-old woman was walk­ing along Has­sarath Road near Es­mer­al­da Gar­dens when a man armed with a knife ap­proached her and stole her bag, which con­tained two cell­phones, $400 in cash and oth­er per­son­al items. He then ran off.

The sus­pect was de­scribed as be­ing of African de­scent, slim-built, bare­back, and wear­ing torn grey three-quar­ter pants. Just over two hours lat­er, around 7.30 am, a gro­cery store man­ag­er on the same road was about to leave home when a man hold­ing a knife forced his way in­to his bed­room.

The man­ag­er tried to wres­tle the knife from the in­trud­er but was cut on both arms dur­ing the strug­gle. The sus­pect fled with the vic­tim’s wal­let.

Po­lice said the de­scrip­tions in both in­ci­dents matched, and they are treat­ing the two rob­beries as con­nect­ed.

Fight leads to stab­bing in Tu­na­puna

A 41-year-old man is in po­lice cus­tody af­ter a fight on Tu­na­puna Road left an­oth­er man nurs­ing a stab wound to the chest on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

Po­lice say the al­ter­ca­tion be­gan around 2.30 pm, when one man struck the oth­er in the head with a shov­el. In re­tal­i­a­tion, the in­jured man pulled a fold­ing knife and stabbed his at­tack­er in the left side of his chest.

De­spite his in­jury, the man man­aged to walk to the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion, where he filed a re­port. He was tak­en to hos­pi­tal, and doc­tors lat­er con­firmed that one of his lungs had col­lapsed.

Po­lice ar­rest­ed the 41-year-old short­ly af­ter and re­cov­ered the knife. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are on­go­ing.

Se­cu­ri­ty guard held for or­ches­trat­ing cop­per wire heist

A se­cu­ri­ty guard, who claimed he was tied up dur­ing a rob­bery at his work­place in Cou­va, has been ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice dis­cov­ered he al­leged­ly helped plan the heist.

Po­lice said around 11.30 pm on Mon­day, of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to a re­port of in­trud­ers at a Cam­den Road busi­ness. When they ar­rived, they found the guard hand­cuffed on the floor. He told of­fi­cers he was am­bushed and bound by ban­dits.

The men re­port­ed­ly stole lengths of cop­per wire val­ued at $90,000 and used a white Kia H-100 van to load the loot. The guard claimed the ban­dits then aban­doned the van on the com­pound and fled on foot.

Of­fi­cers searched the area and ar­rest­ed two sus­pects, aged 24 and 25. Fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed the guard had al­leged­ly con­spired with them to car­ry out the rob­bery.

All three men were tak­en in­to cus­tody and are ex­pect­ed to be ques­tioned more. —Shane Su­perville