Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

One sus­pect re­mains in po­lice cus­tody as the hunt con­tin­ues for the oth­er rob­bers in­volved in Wednes­day morn­ing’s dar­ing ATM heist in Ply­mouth, To­ba­go.

Po­lice be­lieve they have iden­ti­fied one of the ban­dits—the man seen dressed as Bat­man in CCTV footage—who was cap­tured break­ing in­to the First Cit­i­zens ATM on Shel­bourne Street.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the thieves first held up a To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) com­pound, man­aged by the Eco In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go, in Cour­land, where they stole a back­hoe and a van. They then drove ap­prox­i­mate­ly three kilo­me­tres to the com­mer­cial build­ing hous­ing the ATM.

Us­ing the arm of the back­hoe, the sus­pects broke through the wall of the build­ing and dis­lodged the vault. How­ev­er, they were un­able to load the vault on­to the get­away ve­hi­cle af­ter the back­hoe’s arm was dam­aged dur­ing the op­er­a­tion.

Af­ter about ten min­utes, the ban­dits fled the scene with­out tak­ing any mon­ey. The stolen van was lat­er found aban­doned at Ad­ven­ture Trace.

Mean­while, the Ply­mouth/Bethes­da Vil­lage Coun­cil has con­demned the rob­bery, say­ing it has dis­rupt­ed the peace and se­cu­ri­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty.

In a me­dia state­ment, the Coun­cil said the ATM pro­vid­ed an es­sen­tial and con­ve­nient ser­vice for res­i­dents of Ply­mouth and sur­round­ing ar­eas. It urged res­i­dents to re­main vig­i­lant and re­port any sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty to the po­lice, and al­so called for in­creased pa­trols to im­prove po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty in the area.