Kevon Felmine

Store work­ers and street ven­dors took mat­ters in­to their own hands yes­ter­day when they pur­sued and beat two Ja­maican na­tion­als who robbed De­tour Gents Store in San Fer­nan­do. The sus­pects, 34 and 37, who stayed in Ari­ma, were ar­rest­ed along with a 40-year-old Princes Town Spe­cial Re­served Po­lice of­fi­cer who was held af­ter part of the loot was al­leged­ly found in his car.

The sus­pects were dragged out of their red Mit­subishi Lancer near Sco­tia­bank on High Street af­ter Store Man­ag­er Ri­ad At­tieh shot the car's front tyre with his li­cenced firearm. The sus­pects were held un­til po­lice of­fi­cers, led by ASP Zamsheed Mo­hammed and Cpl Chris Gar­raway, ar­rived a few min­utes lat­er. They re­cov­ered some of the mon­ey at the scene and lat­er found the rest in the SRP's car.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the sus­pects en­tered the store at low­er High Street around 3 pm where one of them asked At­tieh to con­vert US$1,200 in­to TT cur­ren­cy. Work­ers said while the trans­ac­tion was tak­ing place, the oth­er sus­pect pre­tend­ed he was brows­ing though some cloth­ing.

Calls for joint po­lice/army pa­trols on High Street

Cashier Mar­jorie Zou­da said that af­ter the sus­pect was giv­en the mon­ey, he asked At­tieh to change a fur­ther US$8,000 but was told that it too much. She said the man then shout­ed, "Well give me back my mon­ey, I pay my work­ers in US." But af­ter re­ceiv­ing his US cash back he did not re­turn the TT cur­ren­cy. He and his ac­com­plice then ran out the store with both TT and US cur­ren­cy.

Lennox An­drews, a shoe­mak­er who op­er­ates out­side the store, said when he saw the men es­cap­ing, he and an­oth­er street ven­dor ran be­hind the car. "We ran up be­hind them and con­trolled the man on the pas­sen­ger side. We took him out of the car and dealt with him. We let the boss­man train his gun on the next one so he could not move."

An­drews said al­though the busi­ness­men dis­agreed at times, they were not al­low­ing ban­dits to dis­rupt their lives on High Street. Zou­da said it was fright­en­ing that the es­ca­lat­ing crime sit­u­a­tion had reached their busi­ness and called for joint po­lice/army pa­trols on High Street. Po­lice al­so got a set­back when an of­fi­cer re­spond­ing to the rob­bery was re­port­ed to have suf­fered a heart at­tack.

Re­ports in­di­cat­ed that PC Mooti­lal of the Mara­bel­la Po­lice Sta­tion com­plained of chest pains while be­ing trans­port­ed to the crime scene. He was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was be­ing treat­ed.