A Belizean woman has been arrested and charged with theft by Chetumal police after she allegedly was caught stealing liquor and clothes at the Plaza de America Shopping Mall, and the Melody Clothing Store in Chetumal on Thursday.
The woman, identified as Shirley Ardeth Arnold (also known as Shirley Lambey), 34, an unemployed Belizean, has been detained at a Chetumal Police Station, and is waiting to be taken to court on the charges.
According to Friday’s edition of the Diario de Chetumal, an online Mexican newspaper, Arnold was arrested by the State Preventive Police in Chetumal after she was caught stealing inside a convenience store located at Plaza de America, after allegedly committing the same offense at Melody, on the same day.
The shopping mall security officers of Chedraui, a store in Plaza de America, were monitoring the mall security cameras when they saw a woman, later identified as Arnold, taking four bottles of wine from one of the shelves and hiding it inside her bag.
When the woman tried to walk out of the store without paying for the liquor, security officers approached and requested that she open her bag. The officers found the four bottles of wine inside. The Mexican police were immediately alerted and Arnold was handed over to them. She was arrested and charged with the offense.
The newspaper reported that while Arnold was in police custody, waiting to be charged for the offense at the Chedraui, security officers and a supervisor from the Melody Clothing Store, which is in another location, came in and reported that Arnold had also stolen from their store. After noticing that several blouses were missing, the staff of Melody reviewed the surveillance tapes, which captured Arnold taking down the blouses from the rack and putting them in her bag.
Police and the staff of Melody searched Arnold’s bag, which was with her in the detention room, and they found two blouses inside.
Arnold was then transferred by the State Preventive Police (PEP) to the facilities of the Attorney General, where she was handed over to the public prosecutor to be dealt with on charges of theft.