Jensen La Vende

There was height­ened po­lice ac­tiv­i­ty at the Cit­rus Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day, af­ter ban­dits again raid­ed the com­pound, stole juice and soft drinks, then en­gaged in a shoot-out with se­cu­ri­ty guards when they re­turned to col­lect some of the loot they had stashed on the roof of one of the build­ings on the com­pound.

Po­lice, who had ear­li­er re­port­ed to the East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, com­pound to in­ves­ti­gate an overnight rob­bery, were again called to the com­pound around 1.30 pm af­ter five ban­dits en­gaged in a shoot-out with CGA se­cu­ri­ty just af­ter 1 pm.The men re­port­ed­ly had re­turned to the com­pound to col­lect the rest of the items they had stolen overnight. This, ac­cord­ing to the po­lice, in­clud­ed 110 cas­es of grape­fruit juice, 70 cas­es of or­ange juice and 13 cas­es of Chub­by.

But when the ban­dits re­turned for the rest of the loot yes­ter­day, there was more se­cu­ri­ty on the com­pound, they hav­ing been on alert be­cause of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the theft. The ban­dits re­port­ed­ly opened fire on the guards and kept them pinned down for over five min­utes be­fore a joint po­lice and army re­sponse unit ar­rived and scared them off.Ear­li­er, when staff ar­rived at work yes­ter­day morn­ing they found cas­es of three prod­ucts miss­ing. The stolen prod­uct was said to be worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly $20,000.

Po­lice were called to the com­pound to in­ves­ti­gate soon af­ter, and left af­ter wrap­ping up their in­quiries.How­ev­er, at 1.30 pm, mem­bers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force, Crim­i­nal Gang and In­tel­li­gence Unit, Guard and Emer­gency Branch and Besson Street po­lice swooped down on the fac­to­ry again af­ter be­ing called in fol­low­ing the shoot-out be­tween the ban­dits and the se­cu­ri­ty guards.The me­dia, mean­while, had been in­formed that there was a "raid" at the fac­to­ry.

When the me­dia ar­rived on the scene, po­lice were seen search­ing the ve­hi­cles leav­ing the com­pound. There were al­so cas­es of the stolen items on the roof of on the build­ings on the com­pound, which bor­ders part of Pic­ton, Laven­tille. Slip­pers, left be­hind by the ban­dits, who es­caped, were al­so vis­i­ble near the stolen prod­ucts.A res­i­dent who lives close by said they heard gun­shots short­ly af­ter 1 pm, but said they were un­aware of what had hap­pened.

The in­ci­dent came even as mem­bers of the US Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion (DEA) were con­tin­u­ing their lo­cal probe in­to the seizure in Vir­ginia of an es­ti­mat­ed $644 mil­lion worth of high-grade co­caine con­cealed in fruit juice cans orig­i­nat­ing from T&T.The drug was seized by US Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion of­fi­cers at the port of Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, on De­cem­ber 20. The ship­ment was smug­gled in more than 700 cans of Trinidad Juice, man­u­fac­tured by the CGA, a sub­sidiary of SM Jaleel.

The com­pa­ny has dis­tanced it­self from any in­volve­ment in the co­caine find, but has re­port­ed that be­fore the drug find, cas­es of juices had been stolen on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions. How­ev­er, se­cu­ri­ty was re­port­ed­ly beefed up at all branch­es of com­pa­ny in the wake of the in­ci­dent.In a state­ment last evening, SM Jaleel con­firmed the in­ci­dent and thanked the IATF, say­ing their re­sponse quick­ly end­ed what was a tense and ex­treme­ly fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion for the Al­lied Se­cu­ri­ty guards.