Police shoot dead two alleged thieves in Ciracas

Police officers shot dead two men allegedly attempting to steal a Suzuki Satria motorcycle on Saturday after the would-be thieves ignored the officers’ warning shots.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Baharuddin Djafar said on Saturday that two police officers were on patrol when the two “suspicious” men riding a Yamaha Mio motorcycle ignored their warning shots, after allegedly stealing the vehicle from a house in Kelapa Dua Wetan, Ciracas, East Jakarta, at 4 a.m.

“One of the suspicious men was pushing the motorcycle he was trying to steal, while the other was waiting nearby,” Baharuddin told The Jakarta Post.

When the man pushing the motorcycle turned on the motorcycle’s headlight, the police officers fired two warning shots into the air, he said.

But the men resisted arrest, he said.

“A shot was fired at the one [pushing the motorcycle] after two warning shots were ignored, while the other one [riding a Yamaha Mio motorcycle] fled,” Baharuddin said.

He said that one of the officers in pursuit of then second man then shot the alleged thief when the thief stopped at a nearby intersection, apparently unsure as to which direction he should escape in.

Both of the thieves were shot in the back, he said.

“They died on their way to a hospital,” Baharuddin said, adding that their bodies were undergoing autopsies at Kramat Jati Hospital in East Jakarta.

He said that the police had not identified the two men, but that one of them had been in possession of an ID belonging to someone whose initials were RY, and who was born in 1984 and lived in Bekasi, Greater Jakarta.