By TIMES REPORTER –

TWO armed police officers fled a crime scene in dramatic fashion when two robbers attacked Chainama Engen Mini Mart on Great East Road around midnight a fortnight ago.
The bandits sped off with an undisclosed amount of money using a Toyota Corolla.
The police officers, a male and female, who were detained by the police command, are facing disciplinary charges pending a tribunal hearing.
However, the robbers also grabbed money from two customers they found having a meal after they threatened to shoot them.
When the bandits entered the Mini Mart around midnight on March 14, they grabbed the tills, forced them open by cutting the electric cables because they did not have combination keys.
The tills opened and the cash was collected.
The male police officer, who was outside when the bandits struck, is the one who alerted the workers inside that they were under attack before he went to hide in a 210 litre garbage bin, where he stayed for over an hour until more police officers came to the scene.
His female counterpart hid in the car where she made several phone calls to the police command calling for reinforcements.
Reinforcements from the Zambia Police Service and a security company only came after an hour when the robbers had sped off with the cash.
It is believed that no one was injured during the robbery but the bandits fired two gunshots to threaten the two customers to release the money and one of them produced about K6,000.
The robbers did not get any money from the fuel attendants as it had been secured in the safe at the back store.
Three days later, some robbers attacked the spot again but this time they only demanded for the phone number of the owner of the place and threatened to deal with everyone because they were real criminals and not the ones that earlier attacked them.
Police spokesperson Charity Chanda confirmed the development in an interview yesterday, saying the officers have been charged with neglect of duty and would appear before a police tribunal.