To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cers are still search­ing for a group of men who bru­tal­ly at­tacked three su­per­mar­ket work­ers while they were asleep and made off with thou­sands of dol­lars in cash dur­ing a rob­bery ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing in Scar­bor­ough.

The in­ci­dent hap­pened around 2 am at Eday Su­per­mar­ket, lo­cat­ed on Wil­son Road in down­town Scar­bor­ough. The su­per­mar­ket own­er, Lil­iong Zou, told po­lice that three of his em­ploy­ees—Jin­hai Zheng, 20, and Yax­i­an Zheng and Wen­zhong Chen, both 49—were asleep up­stairs when they were star­tled by loud bang­ing on the su­per­mar­ket’s door.

Po­lice said about sev­en men, all armed with knives, forced their way in­to the build­ing through a win­dow on the west­ern side. The sus­pects de­mand­ed cash and be­gan at­tack­ing the em­ploy­ees, chop­ping them sev­er­al times on their bod­ies.

The work­ers hand­ed over the mon­ey. 

The sus­pects left with ap­prox­i­mate­ly $200,000 in cash and US$15,000.

The in­jured work­ers were tak­en for med­ical treat­ment and are said to be re­cov­er­ing.

Mean­while, in the wake of a se­ries of vi­o­lent crimes—in­clud­ing rob­beries, shoot­ings, and mur­ders—in down­town Scar­bor­ough, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty had stepped in to help re­store a po­lice pres­ence by re­pair­ing a mo­bile unit that had been out of ser­vice for years.

Snr Supt Earl Elie said the ve­hi­cle was in­op­er­a­ble for “the last cou­ple of years” be­fore a mem­ber of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty re­paired it and re­turned it to the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion this week. The mo­bile unit is now sta­tioned at the Scar­bor­ough Port, di­rect­ly op­po­site the su­per­mar­ket where the at­tack hap­pened days ago.

“That mo­bile unit has been in the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion for many years,” Elie said. “Thanks to the kind ges­ture of a busi­nessper­son, it was re­paired and re­turned in a con­di­tion that it could be used again.”

He added that the lo­ca­tion was care­ful­ly cho­sen be­cause of its his­to­ry of vi­o­lent in­ci­dents and the dis­tance be­tween down­town Scar­bor­ough and the main po­lice sta­tion.