To­ba­go po­lice are prob­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the rob­bery and as­sault of a va­ca­tion­ing Cana­di­an cou­ple in Black Rock last Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Ian Rod­er­ick Mc Mullin, 63, and Neena Mc Mullin, 65, of New Brunswick, were sun­bathing at Grafton Beach when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

The cou­ple told po­lice they saw two men sit­ting a short dis­tance away but they lat­er fell asleep. How­ev­er, Mc Mullin said he was awok­en by his wife's screams and he saw a masked man, dressed in a hood­ie stand­ing over her.

He was then hit in the face by an­oth­er man and the at­tack­ers both ran off. The ban­dits re­port­ed­ly stole the woman’s wal­let which con­tained US$15, Visa and Mas­ter cards and a cell­phone. Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, the Mc Mullins told po­lice they sub­se­quent­ly saw their at­tack­ers walk­ing away from them down the beach.

The cou­ple was tak­en to hos­pi­tal via an EHS am­bu­lance for treat­ment.

Up to yes­ter­day, two men were said to be in po­lice cus­tody as­sist­ing of­fi­cers with their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

PC O'Neil, of the Old Grange Po­lice Sta­tion, is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion Na­dine Stew­art-Phillips con­demned the at­tack and gave the as­sur­ance the in­ci­dent was re­ceiv­ing the at­ten­tion of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties. She al­so com­mend­ed the po­lice for quick­ly ap­pre­hend­ing two sus­pects in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

Stew­art-Phillips warned that crim­i­nal el­e­ments must not be giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to flour­ish and urged res­i­dents to jeal­ous­ly guard the is­land’s safe­ty and rep­u­ta­tion.

“We are a peace­ful is­land with so much to of­fer and there­fore we must not al­low those crim­i­nal el­e­ments that are in the mi­nor­i­ty to de­ter­mine the way of life for us law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. Tar­get­ing in­no­cent men and women who are vis­it­ing our is­land is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to what we are work­ing hard to achieve in the in­dus­try. These das­tard­ly acts should not be al­lowed to take root in our so­ci­ety,” she said.