Kevon Felmine

Rob­bery at Point Fortin's Re­pub­lic Bank

Two sus­pects were held last evening in con­nec­tion with a dar­ing day­light rob­bery at Re­pub­lic Bank's Point Fortin branch yes­ter­day. The men were caught af­ter a mas­sive man­hunt launched by the South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force with the help of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty he­li­copters and were be­ing in­ter­ro­gat­ed last night.

Ear­li­er, a group of armed rob­bers went on a spree, pulling off a dar­ing $70,000 heist at the bank, be­fore steal­ing a pick­up truck in which they made their es­cape. Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, bank se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, armed on­ly with ba­tons, were made to lie on the floor when the men walked in­to the bank, an­nounced a hold-up and car­ried out the rob­bery.

Po­lice re­ports stat­ed that around 8.15 am, the three men, dressed in black track­suits, en­tered the bank pos­ing as cus­tomers, then whipped out guns and sub­dued the se­cu­ri­ty guards. One of the gun­men then walked across to a teller, de­mand­ed all of the mon­ey in her draw­er and put it in­to a bag.

Af­ter check­ing to make sure the area was clear for a get­away, the men or­dered a fright­ened cus­tomer to hold the door open and ran on­to the busy Techi­er Road. Passers-by re­port­ed that the men came out with ban­danas over their faces, ac­cost­ed the own­er of a blue Nis­san Navara and es­caped in it.

Half an hour lat­er, po­lice re­cov­ered the stolen pick­up, which was aban­doned on a side street at South Cen­tral Road, Mo­ra Vil­lage. Vil­lagers re­port­ed see­ing the three sus­pects get­ting in­to an­oth­er car and dri­ving off. Scores of cus­tomers were turned away from the bank yes­ter­day and were asked to use oth­er branch­es at Fyz­abad, Siparia and Gulf View or ATMS, tele­bank­ing and on­line ser­vices in­stead.

CID of­fi­cers and Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices of­fi­cials were in the build­ing in­ter­view­ing staff for most of the day. In­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed they had the bank's video footage and are con­fi­dent of mak­ing an ar­rest soon. How­ev­er, they be­lieve the sus­pects are not from the area and may have com­mit­ted the rob­bery to ob­tain some quick Car­ni­val cash.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of group mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Re­pub­lic Bank, An­na-Maria Gar­cia-Brooks, yes­ter­day said ex­ec­u­tive man­agers at the bank were as­sist­ing po­lice with in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Gar­cia-Brooks said al­though no cus­tomers or staff were hurt dur­ing the rob­bery, staff were clear­ly shak­en by the in­ci­dent and were re­ceiv­ing coun­selling.