Novi Sad Man Arrested for Pool Thefts in Sijarinska Banja
Police in Leskovac say they arrested V.V. (1971), a suspect in a string of thefts at the pool in Sijarinska Banja. Cards and documents belonging to others were found in his apartment.
Officers of the Interior Ministry in Leskovac have arrested V.V. (1971) of Novi Sad on grounds of suspicion that he committed theft in continuity. He is accused of thefts at the pool in Sijarinska Banja, where, investigators suspect, he took money and various items from several visitors to the complex over a recent period. The Leskovac Police Department announced the arrest in the morning hours of August 10.
Police first identified the suspect, the statement says, then searched the apartment where he was staying. The search turned up cash, personal documents and bank cards issued to other people, along with other items suspected of coming from the thefts.
The statement did not give the total value of the stolen money and belongings, nor how many visitors have reported thefts so far. It also did not say when the first reports reached police.
The suspect has been ordered held for up to 48 hours, on the order of the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Lebane. He will be brought before the prosecutor along with the criminal complaint, who will then decide how the case proceeds.
What “theft in continuity” means
The classification means several individual thefts are treated in law as a single offense, when they are linked by timing, by the same method and by the same opportunity used to carry them out. That is why the statement refers to victims in the plural rather than describing a single case.
Serbia’s Criminal Code prescribes a fine or up to three years in prison for basic theft. The value of the items taken and the circumstances under which they were taken determine which classification ends up in the indictment. The number of victims is not yet known, since police are still establishing who the items found in the apartment belong to.
Other people’s documents and cards open a second line of checks
The discovery of bank cards and personal documents in other people’s names is the part of the statement that points beyond the theft itself from the pool loungers. The owners of those cards are not necessarily the same people who reported missing money in Sijarinska Banja, and investigators will also check whether any of the cards were used after they went missing. Until a final verdict, all of this remains at the level of suspicion, and the suspect faces no charge beyond what is stated in the criminal complaint.
Sijarinska Banja lies in the municipality of Medvedja, in Jablanica District, so the case is being handled by the prosecutor’s office in Lebane rather than in Leskovac, where the police department is headquartered.
What these reports have in common
Thefts at the pool in Sijarinska Banja belong to a type of case reported every summer following the same pattern. A wallet, phone and documents stay in a bag on a lounger or in a changing room, the owner goes into the water, and the loss is not noticed until they are about to leave. Because of that, victims often cannot say exactly when the theft happened, which makes it harder to link individual reports to a single person.
That is also why such series usually take weeks to close. Reports arrive one by one, on different dates and with descriptions that offer little help, and only once the repeated visits of the same man line up with the timing of the disappearances do police get grounds for identification. In this case, according to the statement, that step came before the search of the apartment.
Visitors who earlier reported missing belongings at the pool in Sijarinska Banja can expect a call from police asking them to identify items, if something matching their report turns up among the recovered property.
