.png)
4 months ago
21
An armed robber tried to play cool and was busted at a hotel in the north-central Ecuadorian province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.
Surveillance footage of the July 7 robbery attempt showed one of the assailants talking to the front desk worker as he was about to pull out his gun.
The frightened employee slowly started to raise his hands when a police patrol suddenly stopped at the hotel driveway before his accomplice could alert him.
The sly suspect suddenly slid the gun through the window slot as part of an attempt to appear as if he was a guest.
A police officer didn't fall for the trick and stormed inside and instructed him to get on the floor.
A suspect (right) and his accomplice were busted trying to rob a hotel in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Ecuador on July 7
The robber tried to play it cool as if he was a customer when police stormed inside the hotel
The cop then kicked the armed man to the floor, and his partner walked inside to provide backup.
Meanwhile, the other cops remained by the entrance securing the second suspect before they escorted him inside the hotel.
Crime stats released by Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office on Monday showed that 32,699 robbery reports were registered in the first six months of 2024 throughout the country.
In all, there were 98,484 robberies reported last year.
A second suspect is escorted into the hotel lobby after cops in Ecuador thwarted a robbery attempt
The data shows that 3,492 home robberies happened during the first six months this year. In comparison, there were 10,910 in 2023.
Once peaceful Ecuador is enduring an unprecedented wave of violence linked to narcotics trafficking.
With ports on the Pacific, the country serves as a transit point for cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru and sent to the United States and Europe.
The homicide rate in Ecuador, a country of about 17 million people, soared from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 47 per 100,000 last year.
English (US)