A Gwanda nurse who claims that her low salary caused her to live out of shoplifting was yesterday nabbed by security guards at an OK Supermarket in the town.
25 year old Sikhanyisiwe Moyo who is employed as a nurse at Phakama Clinic in Gwanda was arrested by the alert security guards as she tried to walk out of the shop with ten 750ml bottles of Viceroy Brandy.
The arrest led to the recovery of several other items stolen from the chain store by Moyo using the same tactic.
Moyo is reported to have been repeatedly going to the supermarket in her nursing uniform and would pick up groceries listed on an old till slip from the store and walk straight to the exit with the groceries and make her way through the unsuspecting guards who would release the goods on the strength of the old receipt.
Her luck came to an abrupt end yesterday after an alert CCTV monitoring guard realised that the nurse pushed a shopping trolley with ten bottles of brandy straight to the exit point without going through the pay points.
The guard immediately alerted his colleagues at the door who double-checked the till slip only to discover it was an old till slip leading to her immediate arrest.
One of the security guards immediately remembered that the nurse had gone out of the shop with groceries on two occasions on that day which led the police to go for a search at her home where more groceries and till slips from OK Supermarket were recovered.
It was “street drama” in the town when police officers ordered the handcuffed nurse to push a trolley full of groceries through the streets of the townships to the police station.
Questioned upon arrest why she was on a shoplifting frenzy, the kleptomaniac nurse claimed that she was resorting to the criminal life because her salary was not enough to cater for her family’s needs. The nurse blamed the delays in getting their salaries as another contributing factor to the life she was leading.
Several incidents of professionally employed people nabbed for shoplifting have been reported in the country. In one case a doctor was arrested for stealing a packet of cigarettes as he did not have money due to delayed salary payments by government.
Moyo will appear at the Gwanda magistrate’s court on Monday on the charge of several counts of shoplifting.