Two East Jakarta Alfamarts robbed

(Kompas/Fabian Januarius Kuwado)

Two Alfamart minimarkets in East Jakarta were robbed in the early hours of Monday, in what is only the latest in a series of armed robberies targeting Alfamarts throughout Jakarta over the past few weeks.

The first of these robberies was at an Alfamart on Jl. Dewi Sartika in Kramat Jati district at 1:20 a.m. A group of five robbers arrived on vehicles and managed to get away with Rp 20 million (US$2,112).

The other robbery took place at Jl. Wijaya Kusuma Raya in Duren Sawit district at 2:30 a.m., where three robbers stole Rp 66 million ($6,970), or three days worth of the store’s sales.

In both instances, the robbers threatened store employees with meat cleavers. Both groups of thieves also tied up some of the employees while forcing the others to open the stores’ safe-deposit boxes.

In addition to stealing the store’s money, the robbers at Jl.Dewi Sartika also snatched the Blackberry of a customer who happened to be in the store while the robbery took place.

More notably, in the other robbery at Jl. Wijaya Kusuma Raya, the robbers took steps to hide their tracks and actually grabbed the CCTV decoder that was recording their actions, kompas.com reported.

Other recent Alfamart robberies included one on Jl. Pahlawan Revolusi in Klender, West Jakarta, on Sunday, where robbers made off with Rp 30million ($3,168) in cash.

Another was in Cipinang Jatinegara district, where four robbers wearing facemasks escaped with Rp 60 million ($6,337) in cash on June 8. (png/iwa)