ST GEORGE’S—Five Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als who at­tempt­ed to rob a branch of the Grena­da Co­op­er­a­tive Bank (GCB) on the is­land of Car­ri­a­cou on Mon­day, have been re­mand­ed in­to cus­tody af­ter mak­ing a court ap­pear­ance here yes­ter­day.

The men—Jabari Roach, a 25-year-old air con­di­tion­ing tech­ni­cian; Al­lan Melville a 28-year-old ven­dor; Akeem John a 32-year-old painter; Nashawn Scot­land a 29-year-old me­chan­ic and 36-year-old fish­er­man Keon Dick, did not have le­gal coun­sel when they ap­peared in the St George’s Num­ber two Mag­is­trate’s Court. They will re­turn to court on No­vem­ber 3.

Each of the ac­cused has been charged with three counts of rob­bery with vi­o­lence; en­ter­ing the state with­out the con­sent of an im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer and fail­ing to present them­selves to a gov­ern­ment-ap­proved quar­an­tine fa­cil­i­ty.

Head of the Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions De­part­ment of the Roy­al Grena­da Po­lice Force, In­spec­tor Trevor Rod­ney, said the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the rob­bery are on­go­ing and oth­er charges are im­mi­nent.

“This in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and oth­er charges will be brought against them in the fu­ture,” he said.

“Be­cause the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing, there is in­for­ma­tion that we can­not di­vulge at this mo­ment,” he told jour­nal­ists who had gath­ered out­side the court build­ing.

But he said the max­i­mum penal­ty for rob­bery with vi­o­lence, which is an in­dictable of­fence, is 30 years.

Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 272 of the Crim­i­nal Code, which had been up­dat­ed in 2012, “a per­son who com­mits the of­fence of rob­bery, be­ing armed with any of­fen­sive in­stru­ment, or hav­ing made any prepa­ra­tion for us­ing force or caus­ing harm, is li­able on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment to a term of im­pris­on­ment not ex­ceed­ing thir­ty years, and, in the dis­cre­tion of the Court, to flog­ging.”

Two of the men are re­port­ed to have en­tered the bank armed with guns and wear­ing masks and de­mand­ed cash from three of the tellers. Videos cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia show the men run­ning away from the bank dis­play­ing cash and what ap­pears to be mon­ey bags. They then tried to flee the is­land us­ing a boat, but were caught by the Grena­da Coast Guard. (CMC)