A 34-year-old man without a permanent residence and a 29-year-old resident of Breda were arrested on Thursday after they managed to stay out of the hands of the police for years. The two are suspected of a street robbery and an attempted burglary and have been missing all this time. The police went through a special digital investigation to look for the two and managed to arrest them.
This happened during a ‘digital day of action’ by police officers who are experts in digital investigations into missing persons and untraceable suspects.
The 34-year-old man was arrested in Etten-Leur on Thursday. He was wanted for a street robbery in 2019. The other is suspected of an attempted burglary in March last year. He was arrested in Barendrecht after a digital search.
untraceable
“Unfindable”, the police called the suspects. “If someone has no fixed place of residence or residence, some points of reference are lost. You can’t ring the doorbell anywhere,” a spokesperson said.
The Breda man did have an address where he lived. “We did pass by here, but never found him there. You can’t always sit in front of that door,” the spokesperson responds. So further investigation had to be done, and that was done online.
After several witness calls and an item in the Bureau Brabant investigation program, the 34-year-old man was recognized. But no one knew where the man would be. The cyber team of the police in Markdal then started an online search.
Using images on social media, they found a possible location where the man might be. The police went out and found the man at work. He has been taken in for questioning and investigation.
Attempted burglary
The 29-year-old man from Breda has also been traced via the internet. He tried to break into Teteringen on March 27 last year. Here too, social media and the internet were used to track down the man. That worked and he was arrested in Barendrecht on Thursday.
The police cannot share exactly how the online investigation works. A spokesperson does say that these kinds of searches are held when other evidence comes to nothing. The search is then continued digitally.