It was a wild goose chase for a police traffic warden whose bribes collected from motorists were spirited away by a yet-to-be apprended thief.
The smarter thief had kept tabs on the bundle of notes, took and ran away.
Nonplussed, the traffic officer chased after him and later gave up the chase having outrun him.
Out of frustration, he could only hurl expletives and curses at the young thief who disappeared into the “winds” like a deer.
Hard lesson: Bribe takers may have to start looking for ways to “secure” their loot while on duty.
The incident happened in Embu County at 1.00pm on Wednesday on the stretch of the Nairobi-Meru highway near Kathageri shopping centre, Kenya.
According to reports, the man had emerged from the bushes, grabbed the officers’ stash, then vamoosed up a steep slope adjacent to the road.”There were two unarmed officers at the spot – male and female – the male officer attempted to run after the loot thief but the young man had timed his run well and was well into the thicket,” said a witness.
Moreover, the baton-carrying officers were on the lane opposite the spot where the loot was being kept, and the fact that the male officer had to check for traffic before crossing over gave the daredevil a few more seconds to dash away.
The witness also said : “There are these steep roads that connect to the road, and the spot where the officers were based is shaped like a wedge.
“That is the road the young man used to escape. On realising he could not catch the young man, the officer shouted at him many times.
“But there is little he could do as the man vanished into the bushes.”
