Police arrested two men minutes after they stuck up Digicel’s Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara outlet yesterday.

The men, who had escaped with cellular phones and an undisclosed sum of cash after tying up two employees, were arrested in a minibus with the loot.

Crime Chief Seelal Persaud told Stabroek News that around 2 pm, the men walked into the store and one lifted his shirt and brandished what appeared to be a gun. There are reports that the other man was armed with a knife. The men then duct taped the two female employees who were in the building at the time.

The glasses on the display cases were broken and the dummy phones were removed along with real ones. The men also removed all the money in the cash register.

As the bandits fled, they dropped some of the money.

Persaud said that acting on information received, police stopped the minibus and arrested two men who were later positively identified as the robbers. He said that the phones and cash were recovered but no gun was found.

Questioned about the high number of daytime robberies within the past week, Persaud said that there is no increase but rather the trend is the same when compared with other periods. He noted too that there has been a reduction in the number of robberies committed so far for this year.

Last month, four bandits robbed a Digicel outlet at Mon Repos, in a brazen daylight attack. The robbers subsequently fled into Buxton after they realised that they were being chased. With the assistance of Buxtonians and a rural constable, two of the men were apprehended while the other managed to escape.