At five to two in the afternoon, in a staff room at one of the clinics in the Mother Teresa complex in Skopje, a 42-year-old man from Shtip took a wallet and personal items belonging to a 56-year-old employee.

The woman found him there. She tried to stop him. He physically attacked her.

Officers from the Skopje police department detained him at around 14:50 - less than an hour later. Once the case is fully documented, the appropriate filing will be sent to the competent authorities.

Where this happened

A staff room in a hospital is not a public space. It is where nurses and other personnel leave their belongings while on shift, because there is nowhere else. That someone from outside can walk in there in the middle of a working day says something about the complex itself, not only about the man who did it.

The police response was fast - around 55 minutes from the incident to the arrest. That is the part that worked.

The part that did not work is that the largest healthcare complex in the country has rooms where staff keep their belongings, and through which a stranger can move unnoticed until the moment somebody happens to walk in on him.