If You Going To Steal, Steal With Plan!

Have you ever stolen anything? Most of us as small children or even as adults have done so. Socrates says that no one knowingly commits an evil action, evil is turned into good in the mind. Most people when they do decide to steal, they do so with a plan. They don’t just blunder in. The mission is to the point. Break in, pack up the loot and get out without being caught. However, some people while they do have a plan, sometimes the plan does not come to light and gets compromised.  

Reggie used to own a supermarket on Wavamunno Road – the one on the way to Speke Resort Munyonyo and not the Wavamunno Road in Entebbe. Three months after he opened up, Goon and his friends broke in to it during the night in the middle of a heavy rainstorm which, provided the perfect cover. Except, once they got in and after breaking into the cash room, rather than make off with the loot, they spied the spirits shelf. Do you know what they did next? They sat down, made themselves comfy and went on a binge. Of course, in the process they got rather blazed and passed out that when Reggie opened up the following morning – well tell a lie, he didn’t open up because Goon had already done it for him, he found them slumped and passed out – unable to wake up even after they had been kicked and slapped about.

The first time Goon paid me a visit when I still lived alone, he left a trail of evidence that made catching him ever so easy. I had been to South Africa along with Kalungi Kabuye and Robert Kasozi to cover M-Net Face of Africa finals and while there, in our media gift bags, we were given impressive photographers jackets.

Some months after our return, I was stuck in traffic outside Electoral Commission on Jinja Road and weaving through the traffic on a bicycle, was a man wearing the M-Net Face of Africa jacket – something I found rather odd since I knew there were only three jackets in town. Calls were quickly placed to Kabuye and Kasozi who both confirmed that they had theirs. Getting home hours later, I tore the house apart – and after tearing it apart twice more, I realized that it was gone.

So how did Goon get caught? Goon would come round once a month to cut the grass of the four houses in the estate and on this occasion when he came, he came riding a bicycle – a bicycle that looked familiar, but just couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. Then it dawned – outside Electoral Commission, the man wearing MY M-Net Face of Africa jacket. After his arrest and going to his home in the not so nice part of Namuwongo, Police uncovered a hoard of treasures, all stolen from the houses in the estate.

But the real winner of a Goon in this Sunday tale, is Jimmy Oteng, a habitual thief who broke into the crib of Bernard Seruru, who, just happens to be a magistrate in Okute district – wherever that is. It is said that Seruru when into shock when Oteng was arraigned before him wearing his stolen clothes. To make matters worse, Seruru, had released him the day before for stealing a bag of sesame because Plaintiff did not come forward to court to testify.

So upon release, Oteng went on the rampage breaking into Seruru’s house and making off with a suitcase of clothes and two 20-litre jerry cans of water which he mistook for cooking oil. Ouch!

I really wish I could have seen the look on his face when he got back to his den to find out that that all along he had been lugging jerry cans of water!                      


PHOTOS: New Vision, Daily Monitor, M-Net, URN