One of the cleverest and most dangerous gangs of armed highway robbers to have operated in the Settlement in many years, was safely behind bars yesterday morning as a result of successful police raids carried out at various addresses during the night from Monday to Tuesday. On information received, police parties under Detective Sergeant H. Brotherton of the Crime Branch, Headquarters, raided room 460 at the Far Eastern Hotel, 90 Vu Ya Ching Road at 7 p.m. on Monday and arrested nine suspects. After questioning these men, the police party went to an address at 460 Burkill Road where the headquarters of the gang were raided.
Only one suspect was arrested here as the leader of the gang and his "assistant" were out at the time.
Patiently, members of the police party awaited the return of these men.
Shortly after 3 o'clock yesterday morning, they eventually turned up and were taken to Police Headquarters for questioning.
The gang, which, according to investigating police officers, has been responsible for no less than 14 armed highway hold-ups during the pass six months, faced the First Special District Court yesterday morning. Mr. Thomas S. Lea, Municipal Advocate, told the judge that four of the men had pleaded guilty to the charges preie: red against them by the police but that additional time would be required to investigate the case as it was believed that in addition to the 14 known cases perpetrated by the gang, it was possible that they were responsible for a number of other crimes. The prisoners were therefore remanded in custody for another two weeks when the case will come up for hearing again.
Whilst raiding the Burkill Road house, two.38 calibre pistols, one a "Demon" and the other a "Browning," were found buried in the ground, although the Police believe that the gangsters must have more arms hidden away elsewhere.
Scheme of Robbery Their method of robbing well-dressed Chinese taxi-users was always the same. Three men waited in front of a'hotel or singsong house and when their proposed victim was about to enter a waiting taxi, two armed men followed whilst a third sat next to ihe driver and ordered him to proceed to some lonely road. On the way they searched the victims' pockets, relieving him of any valuables that he may have carried on his person. They then ordered the car to stop and ordered the victim out. Subsequently they usually forced the driver to take them to some out-of-the-way road, in the Western district.
Before leaving the car, they invariably gave the driver $6 and told CINE we him to inform the police of the robbery. The similarity of the various cases left no doubt in the minds of investigating police officers as to the fact that one and the same gang was responsible for all these crimes, although the intensive search for the criminals was only crowned with success when a police informer was able to find out the addresses of the two hide-outs on Monday evening.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.