The delivery of boxes of cigarettes to a tobacconist in Fresnes was cut short this Tuesday morning.
Three robbers managed to seize around ten cartons of cigarettes, but they were arrested shortly after in the Seine-Saint-Denis department.
It is around 6 a.m. when a delivery man arrives in front of the tobacco bar at 44, boulevard Pasteur, in the Peupleraie district.
As he takes out the cartons of cigarettes to give them to the tobacconist, the delivery man discovers two people, faces hidden and hands gloved, running towards him and spraying him with tear gas.
His fellow driver and the tobacconist were in the store and were unable to intervene.
The two robbers join a third accomplice, ready to drive off at the wheel of a Ford Transit van.
Around ten cartons of cigarettes had time to be loaded and the thieves managed to flee towards Antony (Hauts-de-Seine).
The goods could be recovered
But not only is their departure filmed by a witness, but the delivery man can immediately notify the police that a GPS beacon is found in one of the stolen boxes.
A few moments are enough for the manager of the cigarette delivery company to succeed in locating the fugitives and thus help the police to go looking for them.
Also read: Smuggled cigarettes in Île-de-France: exasperated tobacconists go on the offensive
The Seine-Saint-Denis police officers then intervened in Bondy, where two of the three alleged perpetrators of the morning robbery were arrested in their van.
The thieves were taken into custody in Créteil.
The merchandise was also recovered.
Even if the investigation, entrusted to the Val-de-Marne departmental judicial police service, has barely started, the police already know that the robbers were not at their first attempt.
The gendarmes of the Saint-Omer brigade, in Pas-de-Calais, had already placed a GPS beacon on the thieves' van.
They have been following them for several months, suspecting them of many similar acts.