Derek Achong

Vet­er­an Sen­tinel Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd em­ploy­ee Bert Clarke was shot dead by armed rob­bers in a dar­ing heist on one of the com­pa­ny's cash trans­port vans in Ma­coya, Tu­na­puna, ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.Around 4.30 am yes­ter­day, Clarke, 59, of Bre­gon Park, D'Abadie, and his uniden­ti­fied dri­ver were head­ing east along the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way when a black Ford Ranger col­lid­ed with the back of their van near to the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The se­cu­ri­ty van veered right be­fore the dri­ver man­aged to stop it in the mid­dle of the high­way.Po­lice said the oc­cu­pants of the pick-up truck jumped out, drew guns and be­gan shoot­ing at the se­cu­ri­ty van.Clarke, who was in the pas­sen­ger seat of the Mit­subishi pan­el van, was shot sev­er­al times be­fore he was able to draw his gun.His dri­ver re­port­ed­ly man­aged to scram­ble out the van and run to some near­by bush at the side of the high­way, where he hid un­til the gun­men left.

The ban­dits grabbed six bags of mon­ey from the ve­hi­cle's stor­age area. Po­lice es­ti­mat­ed the val­ue of the haul at more than $250,000.The gun­men then switched their pick-up truck for a white SUV, which was lat­er found aban­doned along the road in Pi­ar­co.Po­lice said both ve­hi­cles used in the heist were stolen at gun­point be­tween Mon­day and Tues­day night.Po­lice ar­rived on the scene soon af­ter the raid and cor­doned off the high­way be­tween the Ma­coya and Or­ange Grove in­ter­sec­tions.

Traf­fic on the east­bound lane quick­ly ground to a halt, with po­lice di­vert­ing frus­trat­ed dri­vers to the East­ern Main Road, Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and oth­er al­ter­na­tive routes.The traf­fic on­ly re­turned to nor­mal on the high­way around mid­day when crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors fin­ished work and Clarke's body was re­moved from the ve­hi­cle by un­der­tak­ers.

How­ev­er, traf­fic snarled along sev­er­al mi­nor roads as po­lice set up road­blocks in East and Cen­tral to find the killers.In­ves­ti­ga­tors said more than 50 spent shells were found on the scene, in­clud­ing 5.56 shells which are on­ly used in the high-pow­ered as­sault ri­fles.While search­ing the pick-up truck, po­lice found the rob­bers had filled the back seat with bags of ce­ment."They did that to add weight to the ve­hi­cle to sta­bilise it in the crash," a po­lice of­fi­cer said.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed the sus­pects as "pro­fes­sion­als" and said they be­lieved they took weeks to plan the heist, as it was ex­e­cut­ed with "ex­pert pre­ci­sion."The Sen­tinel dri­ver was in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice and re­leased. In­ves­ti­ga­tors were said to be pur­su­ing a num­ber of leads, but no one was ar­rest­ed up to last evening.

Yes­ter­day's rob­bery bore strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to an­oth­er one in­volv­ing the com­pa­ny's trans­port ve­hi­cle on Sep­tem­ber 25 last year. In that in­ci­dent, two guards were robbed of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1.2 mil­lion while dri­ving on north­bound lane of the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way in Gas­par­il­lo.Se­nior Supt John Daniel, head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau, and In­sp Mark Ma­haraj, of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, are head­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The T&T Guardian learned yes­ter­day that af­ter nu­mer­ous armed rob­beries of em­ploy­ees and their cash trans­port ve­hi­cles over the past three years, the man­age­ment of Sen­tinel Se­cu­ri­ty was warned by the po­lice and a union for se­cu­ri­ty guards to mend laps­es in its op­er­a­tions.

Po­lice sources said that ear­li­er this year, ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment of the se­cu­ri­ty firm held a meet­ing with top-rank­ing de­tec­tives of the Port-of-Spain CID, af­ter there were sev­er­al in­ci­dents where their guards were robbed of firearms and cash they were trans­port­ing.A source told the T&T Guardian that com­pa­ny of­fi­cials were ad­vised to in­crease se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in their cash trans­port ve­hi­cles and to close­ly mon­i­tor their em­ploy­ees.

Pres­i­dent of the Es­tate Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion Edi­son Munroe said yes­ter­day that his or­gan­i­sa­tion had al­so writ­ten to the com­pa­ny on the is­sue sev­er­al times.He said his or­gan­i­sa­tion pro­posed that the two par­ties meet to eval­u­ate the com­pa­ny's cur­rent sys­tem, as it re­lates to their of­fi­cers' safe­ty, and de­vise a plan to im­prove it. How­ev­er, he said they were still await­ing a re­sponse.Refer­ing to yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent, Munroe said: "This is not the first time this has hap­pened...It has been go­ing on for years."

He claimed his or­gan­i­sa­tion was aware that some se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies were us­ing "an­cient" equip­ment and ve­hi­cles which caused of­fi­cers to be "easy tar­gets" for ban­dits. He al­so said of­fi­cers should re­ceive more in­ten­sive train­ing."They are putting of­fi­cers' lives at se­ri­ous risk," Munroe said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said his or­gan­i­sa­tion was call­ing on act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams to or­gan­ise a con­fer­ence with his or­gan­i­sa­tion, se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies and oth­er stake­hold­ers to de­vel­op pro­to­cols which would be ad­hered to by all par­ties.Sev­er­al calls were made to Sen­tinel's head of­fice at the cor­ner of Stone and Duke Streets in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, but when­ev­er the T&T Guardian asked to speak to an of­fi­cial for com­ment on the rob­beries, the per­son on the oth­er end re­peat­ed­ly hung up.