Briton arrested for phone theft

A BRITON claiming to be hard up on Wednesday narrowly survived a mob after he grabbed a sleek cell phone from a Kampala city shop and ran away. Wearing a black shirt, matching trousers and white shoes, Robert Hobson, 55, a retired British Airways engineer, walked to a shop and asked for a phone. “He asked the attendants if they had a BlackBerry phone that would enable him access the Internet,” Monday Johnson Agaba, the Central Police Station crime chief, told The New Vision. The shop, Nokia Phones, is located on Kirumira Towers on William Street in Kampala. An attendant, Barbara Ruth Sseruga, handed Hobson the BlackBerry phone worth sh450,000. “As soon as the attendants handed him the phone, he walked out of the shop without paying for it,” Agaba stated. He hurried out of the building but Sseruga and colleagues made an alarm as they chased the haggard-looking Hobson. He was cornered near Radio One on Dastur Street. The man appeared before the Buganda Road magistrate, Matthias Tumwijuke, and pleaded guilty and was given a caution. Caution,really? I bet you that if it were a Ugandan, he would have been roughed up and placed in the back of a police patrol truck and would have to endure kicks from police boots enroute to remand. Shouldn't this guy have been remanded then deported: That's what they would have done back in his land