To­day, the T&T Guardian pub­lish­es a se­ries of pho­tographs of a rob­bery at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah on Car­ni­val Tues­day af­ter­noon.

Most of the pho­tos were sent to us by a Guardian read­er, who wish­es to re­main anony­mous for rea­sons of per­son­al safe­ty. Two were tak­en by Guardian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Edi­son Boodoos­ingh.The T&T Guardian passed on the pho­tos to the Port-of-Spain Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment. ASP Ajith Per­sad promised that in­ves­ti­ga­tions would com­mence im­me­di­ate­ly.

The rob­bery oc­curred around 3.40 pm while Lega­cy was cross­ing the Sa­van­nah stage. They show a large group of young men first vi­o­lent­ly rob­bing two peo­ple who ap­pear to be tourists, and then just as vi­o­lent­ly at­tack­ing one of Lega­cy's se­cu­ri­ty guards when he tried to in­ter­vene.

The eye­wit­ness who re­count­ed the in­ci­dent to us said, "It was a shame­ful dis­play by our se­cu­ri­ty forces, who re­spond­ed so slow­ly as to be al­most guilty of be­ing ac­com­plices. There was ab­solute­ly no re­sponse from the Grand Stand se­cu­ri­ty. The po­lice were called mul­ti­ple times by the band's mu­sic truck, and on­ly to­wards the end of the episode did three of­fi­cers start saun­ter­ing to­ward the scene.

"If there was any type of po­lice re­sponse, they could have eas­i­ly cor­doned off the Grand Stand area and eas­i­ly ap­pre­hend­ed the gang, who were in the cen­tre of the se­cured area. The episode last­ed at least three min­utes, which was more than suf­fi­cient time for a po­lice re­sponse.

"Some gang mem­bers were ac­tu­al­ly able to change cloth­ing, and one went off the scene chip­ping with a girl, while oth­ers im­per­son­at­ed the av­er­age by­stander, walk­ing, jump­ing and en­joy­ing the Car­ni­val scene.

"Dur­ing the rob­bery episode, the mu­sic trucks con­tin­ued play­ing and mas­quer­aders con­tin­ued grind­ing down. "It was a tru­ly shame­ful episode for our coun­try, not to men­tion the trau­ma for the cou­ple who was robbed, with the woman try­ing in vain to de­fend her com­pan­ion while he was beat­en by an en­tire gang of men, with his head bleed­ing."

Browse the full pho­to gallery here:http://bit.ly/XYevQw