Rhon­dor Dowlat

British cou­ple Aman­da Binns, 40 and Elias Mark Jr, 33, who were in T&T for Car­ni­val 2018 were forced to pack up and re­turn to Lon­don with their two chil­dren, just hours af­ter they were robbed at gun­point of their phones and rental ve­hi­cle.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 6, just as they ar­rived at a rel­a­tive’s home along Tumpuna Road in Ari­ma, af­ter at­tend­ing Machel Mon­tano’s So­ca King­dom con­cert in Port-of-Spain.

At about 2.20 am, as they ex­it­ed the Toy­ota Rav 4 rental ve­hi­cle, two men ap­proached them. One of the men “cocked” the gun and point­ed it to­wards Mark’s face, de­mand­ing that he hand over his phone or “get shoot”. The men al­so took Binns’ phone be­fore es­cap­ing in the SUV.

Binns’ moth­er is Trinida­di­an and Mark’s fa­ther is al­so Trinida­di­an. How­ev­er, both are British na­tion­als liv­ing in Lon­don, and have two chil­dren–a girl, aged three and a ten-month-old ba­by boy.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian yes­ter­day, Binns de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “trau­mat­ic” but at the same time thanked God that they are alive to­day.

She said hours af­ter the in­ci­dent, she con­tact­ed British Air­ways and told them of the rob­bery and asked to be put on the next flight out of T&T. They de­part­ed that same day.

Binns ex­plained that not on­ly was she robbed, but she was shocked by the treat­ment they re­ceived af­ter. The first was an is­sue with the po­lice about ju­ris­dic­tion in which the crime oc­curred and why they could not take their re­port, while the oth­er was the treat­ment met­ed out to them by the car rental com­pa­ny that op­er­ates out of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

“First, when my fa­ther-in-law con­tact­ed the San Raphael Po­lice Sta­tion they said they couldn’t take the re­port be­cause it was not in their ju­ris­dic­tion and di­rect­ed us to La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion. When Elias went there, La Hor­quet­ta po­lice told them it was with­in San Raphael’s ju­ris­dic­tion. Here, in Lon­don, peo­ple do not go through that. The po­lice take the re­port and then con­tact who­ev­er else and takes it from there,” Binns said.

“When we went to the rental com­pa­ny we weren’t even asked how we were do­ing…all they cared about was ask­ing us a thou­sand ques­tions and were on­ly in­ter­est­ed in if we saw what the gun­men looked like and what they were wear­ing, as though they were the po­lice. They al­so want­ed to charge us TT$9,000 for the in­sur­ance ex­cess, giv­en the fact that when I booked the ve­hi­cle in No­vem­ber via on­line I al­ready paid £900, plus a fur­ther TT$3,000 de­posit, when we ac­tu­al­ly got the ve­hi­cle last Thurs­day.”

Up­on her re­turn to Lon­don and still try­ing to come to terms with the rob­bery, Binns took to her Face­book page and wrote: “Peo­ple, for those of you that don’t know Trinidad; to come away from an in­ci­dent like this, un­harmed, is quite lit­er­al­ly, un­heard of. It is not enough for ban­dits to rob you; they need to beat you, hu­mil­i­ate you, rape your wife and mur­der any­one they find in your house, par­ents, chil­dren, grand­chil­dren and then mur­der you too. I swear to you I am not ex­ag­ger­at­ing. This is the state of Trinidad. Crime over there is vi­o­lent and it is bloody and peo­ple who are vic­tims do not walk away from in­ci­dents. They are car­ried away in body bags.”

Binns chose this way of high­light­ing the rob­bery on the heels of the UK is­su­ing a trav­el ad­vi­so­ry to its cit­i­zens be­cause of the height­ened crimes and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties in T&T.

If the rob­bery had not oc­curred, the cou­ple was due to re­turn to Lon­don on Feb­ru­ary 23. They came to T&T so that their daugh­ter could have ex­pe­ri­enced her first Car­ni­val.