RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Massy Stores yes­ter­day as­sured the pub­lic that the em­ploy­ees who were on du­ty dur­ing the rob­bery of its St Ann’s, Port-of-Spain, branch on Sun­day were re­ceiv­ing the req­ui­site care and at­ten­tion fol­low­ing the trau­ma­tis­ing in­ci­dent.

In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny said, “Massy Stores con­firms that a rob­bery oc­curred at our St Ann’s lo­ca­tion around 6 am on Sun­day 3rd Sep­tem­ber 2023. The in­ci­dent is cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice, with full co­op­er­a­tion from Massy Stores.

“We can con­firm that our af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees are re­ceiv­ing the req­ui­site care as the health and safe­ty of our team and cus­tomers is our pri­or­i­ty. The in­ci­dent is the sub­ject of an on­go­ing po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion and as such no fur­ther de­tails are avail­able at this time. Massy Stores St Ann’s is open to­day (Mon­day) from 7 am to 8 pm to serve our val­ued cus­tomers in the St Ann’s com­mu­ni­ty and en­vi­rons.”

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, about 6 am on Sun­day, five men, at least one of whom was armed, en­tered the store and or­dered work­ers to get on the ground.

Four of the five em­ploy­ees were then tied up with duct tape while the fifth, a fe­male work­er, was forced to open the vault.

Guardian Me­dia was told that both US and TT dol­lars were stolen. How­ev­er, Massy has not dis­closed how much mon­ey was tak­en.

The five heav­i­ly masked men al­so stole a work­er’s cell phone.

The St Ann’s branch re­opened yes­ter­day for busi­ness.

In the past six years, Massy Stores have been hit by four ma­jor rob­beries—three in South and the lat­est one in St Ann’s.

On Jan­u­ary 6, 2023, ban­dits pre­tend­ing to be po­lice of­fi­cers used a ve­hi­cle with flash­ing blue lights to or­der a Massy Stores man­ag­er to pull aside while she was on the road­way. They then com­man­deered her car and took her work­place at Massy Stores Su­per­Centre in La Ro­main and forced her to open the vault.

The man­ag­er was or­dered to re­main in­side the store un­til the men drove away in her sil­ver hatch­back car.

South­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice is­sued an all-points bul­letin and was able to in­ter­cept the car as the men at­tempt­ed to ex­it Gol­con­da on­to the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

One sus­pect was shot dead by po­lice, and two were ar­rest­ed.

In that case, po­lice said the fake po­lice of­fi­cers es­caped with an undis­closed sum of cash.

In Au­gust 2022, the store man­ag­er at Massy Stores in La Ro­main was robbed at gun­point as she ar­rived on the com­pound about 5 am.

Po­lice said then that the man­ag­er was ap­proached by two men, one armed with a gun. They took her to a room where an undis­closed sum of mon­ey was tak­en. The men then tied up the man­ag­er and es­caped.

In June 2018, gun­men again tar­get­ed the La Ro­main branch, this time al­so rob­bing em­ploy­ees dur­ing a $250,000 heist at day­break. The em­ploy­ees who turned up for the ear­ly shift were at­tacked about 6 am.

They were forced in­to the store and tied up. The armed ban­dits ob­tained the keys to the store’s vault from one of the man­agers and emp­tied it of cash. The crim­i­nals es­caped in a wait­ing ve­hi­cle. No ar­rests were made.

Po­lice sources said yes­ter­day that all the rob­beries were still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and added that there had been no break­throughs in three of the four rob­beries at the su­per­mar­ket chain.

The po­lice sources al­so said that em­ploy­ees will be ques­tioned as their in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the lat­est in­ci­dent.