Massy Stores has con­firmed that a rob­bery took place at its Mar­aval branch ear­li­er to­day be­fore open­ing hours.

In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny said no cus­tomers were in the store at the time, and none of the em­ploy­ees were harmed. It added that sup­port has been of­fered to staff af­fect­ed by what it called a “trau­mat­ic event”.

Massy al­so ad­dressed “mis­in­for­ma­tion cur­rent­ly be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed” and clar­i­fied that on­ly a small sum of cash was tak­en. The com­pa­ny said its long­stand­ing pol­i­cy is to keep min­i­mal cash on hand to re­duce risk to staff and cus­tomers.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is in­ves­ti­gat­ing, and Massy said it is co­op­er­at­ing ful­ly but can­not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails at this time.

This is not the first time the su­per­mar­ket chain has faced such an in­ci­dent.

In Sep­tem­ber 2023, five heav­i­ly masked men, at least one armed, stormed the St Ann’s branch and or­dered work­ers to the ground. Four em­ploy­ees were tied with duct tape, and a fifth was forced to open the vault. The rob­bers took both US and TT cur­ren­cy, though Massy de­clined to say how much was stolen. One em­ploy­ee’s mo­bile phone was al­so tak­en.

At the time, Massy al­so con­firmed its co­op­er­a­tion with po­lice.

De­spite that rob­bery, the St Ann’s branch re­mained open with reg­u­lar hours.