RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Miri­am Aertk­er, a Ger­man diplo­mat who is the head of the of­fice of the Unit­ed Na­tions High Com­mis­sion­er for Refugees (UN­HCR) here in T&T is said to be high­ly trau­ma­tized fol­low­ing an armed rob­bery in which she was a vic­tim, on Sun­day night in Curepe.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 8.50 pm Aertk­er along with an­oth­er vic­tim, Jerus Mo­hammed, 38, were in a sil­ver Hyundai Tuc­son dri­ving along Fred­er­ick Street, Curepe be­hind a white Nis­san Ti­i­da which sud­den­ly stopped, forc­ing them to al­so stop.

Four masked men armed with firearms ex­ist­ed the Ti­i­da, ap­proached the vic­tims and an­nounced a rob­bery.

The ban­dits sub­se­quent­ly re­lieved Aetk­er and Mo­hammed both of their cell­phones, a quan­ti­ty of cash and a blue hand­bag be­long­ing to Aertk­er.

They al­so took pos­ses­sion of the Tuc­son, val­ued at $55,000, be­fore es­cap­ing.

Po­lice said that the aban­doned stolen ve­hi­cle was re­cov­ered on Bam­boo Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs, by of­fi­cers of the St Joseph Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment (CID) in com­pa­ny with the St Joseph mo­bile pa­trol.

Of­fi­cers said they found a cel­lu­lar phone and a wal­let in the ve­hi­cle, how­ev­er, Aertk­er's hand­bag was not re­cov­ered.

Aertk­er took to Face­book af­ter the rob­bery where she dis­closed to her con­tacts that she was the vic­tim of a car jack­ing in T&T.

The post read: "Hel­lo every­one, please be care­ful if you re­ceive any strange notes/re­quests from my side. My phone and purse was stolen dur­ing an armed car­jack­ing yes­ter­day when we were held at gun­point here in Trinidad. Am ok. Text me if you need my new num­ber. Have a good day."

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Aertk­er for an in­ter­view, how­ev­er, was told that she was not talk­ing on the is­sue.