NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 15 – A sole burglar has been terrorizing residents of Kilimani and Kileleshwa, only armed with a bag and skills to scale one floor to another.
Those who have fallen victims have nicknamed him ‘Spider-Man’.
On Thursday night, the burglar is believed to have stolen a foreigner’s gun while on February 10, he managed to make away with a safe loaded with cash in one of the houses he broke into.
The victim was in shock when she woke up only to find all her cash mysteriously gone together with the safe.
“She was rushed to the hospital. The thought that someone was in your bedroom when asleep and you didn’t know is frightening,” a tenant within the affected apartments said.
He comes when everyone is asleep,” a Kilimani resident, whose apartment has fallen victim said on grounds of anonymity.
Capital FM News is in the possession of CCTV footage, showing a man on white sports shoes, a blue trouser and a grey t-shirt, confidently tiptoeing from one house to another.
He is also seen climbing the pillars effortlessly, floor after a floor, and even strolling for five minutes before he gets inside.
At one point, he is seen looking over the road as if enjoying the night breeze. He steps on the guardrail, holds firmly on a pillar and climbs up.
Tens of incidents have been reported at Kilimani Police Division and other stations that fall under it.
In the February 10 incident, a victim had accused her house help of stealing the safe and even took her to Kileleshwa Police Station.
“She kept on insisting she was innocent even while at the police station. We decided to retrieve the CCTV footage only to see this man climbs floor after a floor like Spider-Man,” an official managing the apartment told Capital FM News.
She did not want her name to be mentioned or the name of the apartments.
“We have had several incidents,” she said.
In all the incidents, the burglar pounces from midnight and can spend one hour to two in one apartment.
According to detectives, he seems to study a target area before raiding it from the back away from the security guards manning entry points.
A detective at the Kilimani Police Division suspects the ‘Spider-Man’ could be colluding with some of the security guards in affected areas.
Residents of Kilimani who spoke to Capital FM News accused police of failing to act fast before the burglar causes more harm.
“We reported an incident just the other day, but we were not even given an OB number,” one of the residents only identified as Ramesh told Capital FM News.
READ: Burglars on the loose in Nairobi suburbs
Though the cases had drastically reduced in 2018, the trend seems to change this year according to police statistics.
Such cases, though purely of house-breaking through the use of master keys were more rampant in 2016 and 2017.
And even so, they would happen when the tenants were away. Foreigners are usually seen as a soft target according to police.
Senior police officers at Kilimani declined to comment about the incidents and what they were doing to curb the incidents.