Barcelona: A flexible thief squeezed into a
large suitcase and then emerged to plunder valuables from
other bags while inside the luggage compartment of a Spanish
airport bus, police say.
The thief had a partner who would buy a bus ticket and
place the suitcase in a bus from Girona airport to Barcelona
in northeastern Spain, police said in a statement yesterday.
"Once the trip began, he would get out of the suitcase,
search for valuable objects and hide them in a smaller bag he
carried with him," regional Catalan police said.
The thief would then get back into the suitcase, to be
reclaimed by his partner at the end of the 90-minute trip.
Alerted by the repeated thefts, police inspected a
suspicious bag on the bus on June 3 and opened it up. "They
saw there was a man doubled up almost like a contortionist,"
the statement said.
The man had a mobile phone, a small bag and a sharp
object to open zips and locks, police said. Officers boarded
the bus and detained the man who had left the suitcase in the
luggage compartment.
PTI
