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Court Correspondent

FOUR suspected thieves who allegedly broke into a house in Ruwa last week and stole various goods and property worth $538 650 were arrested after they were tracked down using an app on one of the iPhones which they had stolen, a court heard on Saturday.

Simba Sithole (26), Pardon Kasiyandima (24), Calvin Rwodzi (23) and Evidence Mukarwe were facing theft charges when they appeared before Harare magistrate Mrs Judith Taruvinga.

Rwodzi and Makarwe denied the charges and were freed on $1 000 bail each, whilst Sithole and Kasiyandima were remanded in custody to today for mitigation after they pleaded guilty.

The court heard that on September 16, the complainant retired to bed after closing all windows and locking the doors.

It is alleged that the accused persons proceeded to his house and used a pair of pliers to cut the razor wire on top of the security wall to gain entry into the premises.

They used a rod to force open the complainant’s lounge room door to gain entry into the house where they stole a 65-inch Samsung Smart television set which was mounted on the wall.

They proceeded to the dining room and stole a 48-inch Hisense LED Smart television set which was mounted on the wall.

The court heard that the four proceeded to open one of the bedrooms and stole an iPhone cellphone, an iPhone 7 cellphone, a wallet with US$102 which was in the wardrobe and bank cards.

The accused persons proceeded to the other rooms where they stole two Huawei y9 cellphones, an itel s15 cellphone and two itel it 5606 cellphones before disappearing from the scene.

It is alleged that when the complainant woke up he found the property missing, prompting him to report the matter to police detectives.

The detectives started tracking the complainant’s iPhone using an application called “find my phone” and it led them to Mukarwe’s place of residence where all the stolen property were recovered and the four were arrested.