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Crime Reporter

A Harare car dealer lost a Mercedes Benz Sprinter worth thousands of dollars to an armed robber at gunpoint.

The robber approached him over the weekend on the pretext that he wanted to buy the vehicle after a test drive.

According to police, the victim was dumped along King George Road after he was made to believe that the armed robber wanted to pick someone along the road.

He then produced a pistol and ordered the car dealer to get off.

No arrests have been made and police are looking for the suspect.

National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi yesterday confirmed the incident and said investigations were still in progress.

“Police in Harare are investigating a case of robbery of a Mercedes Benz Sprinter, registration number AEW 9760. The victim was approached by the accused person at his car sale, who purported to be a buyer and requested a test drive along King George Road, Harare.

“The accused person indicated that he wanted to pick his friend who was along the same road. When he pulled off the road, he produced an unidentified pistol and ordered the victim to disembark from the vehicle. Police are appealing for information, which might assist with investigations,” he said.

The incident comes after police investigations revealed that the two cars, a silver Toyota Fortuner and a Honda Fit, that were recently used by a gang of armed robbers to raid the Trauma Centre medical facility in Borrowdale and got away with a safe containing an undisclosed amount of cash and several cellphones were hired from a car sale in the CBD.

No arrests have been made and police are still looking for the robbers who committed the crime.

Sources close to the investigations said they had since questioned the owner of the hired cars in connection with the case although he was not involved in the commission of the crime.

It is believed that the owner was not aware that one of the robbers who had approached him to hire the vehicles wanted to commit the crime.

Police made the discovery after the robbers dumped the Toyota Fortuner (ACC 7829) after it was involved in an accident in the Borrowdale area before the robbers escaped using the other getaway vehicle.

They then tracked down the owner of the vehicles and investigations led them to the car hire.

Investigations revealed that before raiding the medical facility, the robbers had first raided a house in Queensdale where they got away with cellphones and masks.

They then proceeded to the medical facility a few hours later.

The armed robbers first attacked a security guard before attacking a doctor and some staff members before they took the safe and several cellphones.