Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Po­lice are yet to iden­ti­fy a sus­pect­ed ban­dit who fell in­to a drain and drowned af­ter rob­bing a closed car deal­er­ship in Mc Bean, Cou­va.

Po­lice said the man was wear­ing a pur­ple T-shirt and a pair of den­im trousers, and was found float­ing in a wide drain that runs at the end of Ra­mou­dit Dri­ve, which is be­hind the com­pound of CASA En­ter­pris­es on the South­ern Main Road.

Po­lice said the alarm sys­tem went off on the com­pound af­ter 2 am yes­ter­day and pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty and the po­lice re­spond­ed. Three men were ob­served jump­ing over the back fence when the re­spond­ing teams ar­rived. Two of the sus­pects man­aged to es­cape but the third was found dead in the drain.

Sev­er­al items were stolen from the site.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day, a con­trac­tor was in­stalling ra­zor wire on the fence to re­place rust­ed barbed wire that was there.

The deal­er­ship has been closed for the last three years fol­low­ing the death of own­er Navin De­onar­ine. There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 ve­hi­cles on the com­pound and ban­dits have ap­par­ent­ly been raid­ing the site for months.

In this lat­est in­ci­dent, the thieves made off with bat­ter­ies from sev­er­al Toy­ota Aquas, val­ued at over $10,000 each and parts from Toy­ota Field­er Hy­brid sta­tion wag­ons. The fa­cil­i­ty is mon­i­tored by cam­eras.

Per­son­nel on the site said the men walked with a blan­ket in a garbage bag as if they had long-term plans to set up a camp on the com­pound and steal as many parts as pos­si­ble.

The scene was vis­it­ed by WPC Ram­sawak, PC Bas­deo and PC Mitchell of the Cou­va Po­lice and of­fi­cers from Homi­cide South. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.