JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Circus robbed of $30,000; manager to decide if it will return to T&T

by

247 days ago
20241031
Employees of the Suarez Brothers Circus on the compound of the circus at Endeavour Avenue, Chaguanas, yesterday.

Employees of the Suarez Brothers Circus on the compound of the circus at Endeavour Avenue, Chaguanas, yesterday.

VASHTI SINGH

Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The man­ag­er of the Suarez Broth­ers Cir­cus is yet to de­cide if they will take Trinidad and To­ba­go off the list of des­ti­na­tions they per­form in af­ter be­ing robbed on Tues­day night.

Po­lice said at 8.10 pm, Ruben Suarez, along with oth­er em­ploy­ees, was at the cir­cus site along En­deav­our Av­enue, Ch­agua­nas, when four gun­men in a white Nis­san B15 drove in and be­gan shoot­ing.

The cir­cus held its last show on Sun­day and was al­ready packed and await­ing trans­port to leave the coun­try for Ja­maica.

Po­lice said Suarez was about to pay em­ploy­ees when the gun­men robbed him of $30,000, his pass­port and oth­er per­son­al doc­u­ments, while two em­ploy­ees were robbed of $2,800 in to­tal.

An em­ploy­ee said they all had to dive on the ground as the ban­dits shot in the air and on the ground as they en­tered.

An­oth­er em­ploy­ee said a work­er was beat­en with a gun butt af­ter telling the ban­dits he did not speak Eng­lish and could not un­der­stand what they were say­ing. In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Suarez was asked if the cir­cus would re­turn to T&T.

“That (rob­bery) is some­thing that can­not hap­pen. This is a fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment, this could have hap­pened dur­ing show­time when fam­i­lies were in­side. This is some­thing to think about,” he said.

Suarez said the com­pound was closed and usu­al­ly there are po­lice of­fi­cers but on the night of the rob­bery, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers present were un­armed.

Com­ment­ing on the rob­bery, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said the cir­cus em­ploy­ees fell vic­tim to the coun­try’s spi­ralling out-of-con­trol crime rate. He called on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry to do more.

“Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty in our na­tion clear­ly ap­pears to the crim­i­nals to be a com­plete clown show and which all cit­i­zens are forced to en­dure. While the ac­tu­al cir­cus troupe might know how to pull off a bal­anc­ing act, the Gov­ern­ment keeps drop­ping the ball on deal­ing with crime,” he said.

He called on politi­cians to unite to ad­dress crime.

“I again call on all politi­cians and stake­hold­ers to put their egos aside and meet to col­lab­o­rate in a mean­ing­ful way to deal with this epi­dem­ic of crime in our na­tion. It’s time to put Trinidad and To­ba­go first. It’s time to take back our coun­try from this sad ex­cuse of a clown show.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored