An 18-year-old stu­dent was caught in the cross­fire when a man, who was about to de­posit a large sum of mon­ey, opened fire on a ban­dit out­side First Cit­i­zens Bank yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Po­lice said the 18-year-old MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy stu­dent is be­ing treat­ed at the Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing shot near Hol­lis Av­enue in Ari­ma.

Po­lice re­ports said around 8 am, a man was about to walk in­to the bank with a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cash when he ob­served a man look­ing sus­pi­cious­ly in his di­rec­tion.

The man told po­lice that just as he was about to en­ter the First Cit­i­zens Bank branch in Ari­ma, the sus­pi­cious in­di­vid­ual pulled out a firearm and point­ed it at him. Seek­ing to de­fend him­self, he pulled out his li­cenced firearm—a Glock 43X—and dis­charged six shots in the di­rec­tion of the ban­dit.

The sus­pect ran off and the in­tend­ed vic­tim of the rob­bery fired more shots in the sus­pect’s di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, the 18-year-old MIC stu­dent who was re­port­ed­ly pur­chas­ing dou­bles near­by was un­in­ten­tion­al­ly shot. Po­lice are search­ing for the at­tempt­ed rob­ber.

The First Cit­i­zens Ari­ma branch was closed for the day soon af­ter the in­ci­dent.

In No­vem­ber 2019, it was re­port­ed that a store man­ag­er was robbed of cash and her bank card when she went to de­posit at the FCB branch in Ari­ma. She was walk­ing along Far­fan Street.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, in De­cem­ber 2017, thieves at­tempt­ed to break in­to the bank’s vault.

Just last year, the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T in con­junc­tion with Crime Stop­pers of­fered a $10,000 re­ward for any in­for­ma­tion fol­low­ing a spate of rob­beries and at­tacks on cit­i­zens who had with­drawn large sums of cash from banks and ATMS.

De­spite the re­ward, last Sep­tem­ber Crime Stop­pers had said there were no “ac­tion­able” tips which could have led to the ar­rest of per­pe­tra­tors. - Joshua Seemu­n­gal