Elderly Stony Hill vendors charged after CCTV links them to lost purse

Police have charged two vendors — one of them 71 — over a purse that vanished from a Stony Hill parking lot, saying closed-circuit cameras recorded how the bag changed hands.

Facing the courts are Jennifer Campbell, 46, who sells goods and lives on Grants Pen Avenue in Kingston 8, and Raphael Dallas, 71, also a vendor, of Golden Hill in the Pinto district of St Andrew. Campbell is accused of larceny by finding; Dallas is accused of aiding and abetting.

Stony Hill Police say that on Friday, July 10, sometime between 9:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., a woman left her vehicle in a lot while she shopped at a supermarket nearby. On return she discovered her purse was gone. Unable to locate it herself, she went to the police.

Officers later examined CCTV recordings that, they allege, show Campbell coming upon the purse and hiding it in a bag she had with her. The same footage, police further allege, shows her walking up to Dallas, taking some items out of the purse, giving him the purse, and the two leaving together.

Investigators arrested both vendors and charged them formally after a question-and-answer session. A date for their court appearance has not yet been set.