Mechanic murders Mohamed: A mechanic shot the owner of a motorbike showroom in the street in the village of Nawa in el-Qaliubia Governorate. The killer was angry with the victim for kicking him out of the shop he'd been renting from him. The landlord was DOA at Shebeen el- Qanater General Hospital, while the unnamed gunman has been arrested. He had been renting a room in the home of the deceased, 36-year-old Mohamed Salem, to use as a workshop. Titty, Madame and friends: A five-man gang in Alexandria who stole LE300,000 from the Sphinx Foreign Exchange Company, owned by a man called Mohamed Naguib, have been arrested. They were named as Hossam Fouad (27), who works for the same forex company; Ahmed Soleiman (30), aka Hamoto, who is unemployed; Gomaa Youssef (46), who has done time for theft; Gaber el-Sayyed (48), another ex-convict; and Ibrahim Saeed (25), a blacksmith. Gomaa and Gaber have curious nicknames – 'Titty' and 'Madame'. The story started when Madame became friends with Hamoto, who was working for the Doctors Foreign Exchange Company in Alexandria. When Hamoto got the sack because he kept on stealing, Madame suggested they rob a forex. Madame introduced him to his friend Hossam, who worked in the Nabi Daniel Street branch of Sphinx. Hossam told them that Sphinx had three other branches – two in Mahattat el-Raml and the third in the Miami district of Alex. He suggested they rob the third one because it always had lots of Egyptian currency, as the cadets at the Naval Academy often buy US dollars there. Egyptian currency would be harder to trace. He added that a humble worker regularly took the money from the forex in Miami to the bank in a black nylon bag, jumping on a bus or microbus in the street outside the exchange, without taking any security precautions. Hossam suggested his friend Titty, who worked as a microbus driver, could help them. Hossam was able to find out when the humble worker, Mohamed Abdel Mohssen (27), would next be taking some money in a bag to the bank. Hossam went to the forex in Miami and watched Mohamed get into a microbus outside, carrying the nylon bag, then rang Titty on his mobile, giving him the number of the microbus Mohamed got on. Titty and Madame were waiting in his microbus near the bank in el-Iskander Ibrahim Street in Miami, with Ibrahim in his car, parked nearby. When the other microbus drove up and stopped, Mohamed got out. Titty and Madame walked up to him, claiming they were police officers. They told him that they were suspicious about the source of the large amount of money he was carrying. They beat him up and forced him to get into Ibrahim's car and drove him to el-Montazah. On the way, they bound his hand and foot. They dumped him there, having taken the cash. For the next three days, Hamato said that he lived the life of Reilly, spending LE22,000, most of it on food and clothes, although Hossam, who'd been given LE75,000, rather spoilt things by insisting on having LE100,000. Hossam was the first of the gang to be arrested, leading the detectives to the others. He was suspected because he was absent from his work in Nabi Daniel Street at the time the crime was committed.
