RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Of­fi­cials of a preschool in Cen­tral were left count­ing their loss­es, af­ter thieves made off with ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000 worth of equip­ment in a metic­u­lous­ly planned break-in ear­ly last Tues­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Inze­maan Mirza of the In­flu­ence Church in Ra­goo­nanan West, Cara­pichaima, via a video that went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, the in­ci­dent was dis­cov­ered when they ar­rived to open the fa­cil­i­ty. 

Mirza said the first sign of trou­ble was the ab­sence of the T&TEC elec­tric­i­ty me­ter, which was re­moved, leav­ing the build­ing with­out pow­er. Up­on fur­ther in­spec­tion, a bro­ken door and a trail of de­struc­tion re­vealed the ex­tent of the crime.

In­side, tele­vi­sions used in the preschool’s chil­dren’s area were miss­ing. The per­pe­tra­tors ap­peared to have gained ac­cess through an up­stairs win­dow. They dis­man­tled and stole ad­di­tion­al equip­ment, in­clud­ing two speak­ers from the stage and two main speak­ers mount­ed above it.

“Who­ev­er did this knew ex­act­ly what they were do­ing. It was well thought out and well planned,” Mirza said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day. 

De­spite the loss, Mirza shared a mes­sage of re­silience and hope, re­flect­ing on the pow­er of grat­i­tude even in dif­fi­cult times. 

“This stuff is tem­po­rary. Our trea­sure is not in the things of this earth, but in what is eter­nal,” he said.

He said the preschool re­mained com­mit­ted to its mis­sion and be­lieved that what had been lost would be re­plen­ished. 

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent, but as of now, no leads have been re­port­ed. They al­so con­firmed that they have had sev­er­al re­ports of break-ins in the Cara­pichaima area over re­cent weeks.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion is urged to come for­ward or con­tact the po­lice at 999, 555, or 800-TIPS.