BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ARMED bandits staged a daring early morning holdup at the Wellington Road Branch of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), leaving two employees traumatised and seeking treatment at the JNF Hospital.
Information reaching SKNVibes states that shortly before 9:00 a.m. today (Jul. 1), a group of armed, masked men entered the bank, which is situated at S.L. Horsford’s Shopping Complex on the southern side of Valu Mart IGA on Wellington Road, and escaped with an undisclosed sum of money.
On arrival at the crime scene, this media house observed heavy police and army presence while a unit from the Emergency Medical Services was about to transport two female employees of the bank to the hospital.
A female, who said she was outside the bank when the incident occurred, recounted what she observed.
“Shortly before nine o’clock this morning, I had parked my vehicle and was heading towards Valu Mart to purchase some chicken when I saw a man exiting the bank. He was grabbed by a masked man, who was standing at the door, and he told the man to loose him because he aint got no business in there and he was leaving.
“The masked man released him and he ran towards me shouting, ‘Miss, miss call the police there is a robbery in the bank.’ I asked him what happened and he said that four armed men with white masks and capes entered the bank and were standing on the counter demanding money, while another one, dressed in the same manner, was at the door.
“After listening to him, I immediately called the police, but after waiting for some time and didn’t see them coming, I called again. While making the second call, I observed another masked man was at a short distance from the bank…I guess he was the lookout man. Suddenly the door opened and the five men came out slowly walking and was joined by the sixth man, and they started running through the passageway between the bank and the building in which the Caribbean Lottery Company is located,” the woman said.
She also said that if the police had arrived shortly after she had made the first call “they would have confronted the men, because they took quite some time after that before making their escape”.
Up to press time, efforts to contact the Manager at RBC’s Main Branch were futile.
SKNVibes also contacted the Assistant Commissioner of Police with responsibility for Operations, Joseph Richardson, who stated that police were at the time investigating and he could not provide any information on the matter.
