What appears at press time tonight to be the second murder of 2009 took place this evening at 5:25 at the night depository slot at the San Ignacio Town branch of the Belize Bank on Burns Avenue, a stone’s throw from the San Ignacio Police Station.
One person is dead and another is in a serious condition after three gunmen opened fire on them at the bank’s office on Burns Avenue at the height of rush hour traffic.
A source told Amandala tonight that the men fired on were a driver and two security officers employed by bottlers Bowen and Bowen, whose Cayo office is located in Esperanza, a village just outside of San Ignacio/Santa Elena.
The men had just pulled up to the night deposit slot, opened the box and were preparing to drop the money bags down the chute when the three gunmen, who apparently had been tailing them in a blue taxi, suddenly opened fire.
Reliable information to Amandala from several sources is that the robbers had been monitoring the team sent to the bank every day to do the night deposits.
The gunmen reportedly fired about 12 shots. Preliminary reports said an AK-47 assault rifle had been used, but police report late tonight that they only found a number of .22 expended shells at the scene. They are still searching to see if there might be shells of other calibers, they said.
One of the security officers, identified to us by another source as Josiah Thompson, chief of security for the Cayo branch of Bowen and Bowen, reportedly fired back, and was killed while doing so from a gunshot wound to the neck.
Thompson, our source said, managed to wound one of the gunmen in the leg, but was unable to prevent him getting an undisclosed sum of money from the slot. Reports are that his comrades reversed for the wounded gunman, and the group then hightailed it in the waiting taxi.
Latest reports are that the taxi was found abandoned on the Benque Viejo Road, apparently crashed, but with no one inside and the money gone. Police told us tonight that they have detained three suspects, all from villages outside Punta Gorda Town, and that they are believed to be of East Indian descent. One of the suspects was injured and was treated at the San Ignacio Hospital.
Police say that they have recovered a sum of money, but cannot say whether it is all the money stolen until bank officials verify the amount.
As of press time late tonight, one victim was treated at the San Ignacio Hospital and then transferred to the Western Regional Hospital in Belmopan, where he is listed as being in a serious condition, and the third victim, police say, received minor injuries.
As far as our source knows, this is the first robbery of its kind in San Ignacio. The brazenness and brutality of the crime terrified onlookers who witnessed it, and sent frightened bank staff scurrying for shelter, many of them believing that the shooting was happening right inside the bank.
In November last year in Corozal Town, two persons got away with over $100,000 from the Belize Bank ATM there when two tellers went to replenish it. One of those tellers was later arrested, along with her boyfriend, who was identified as one of the robbers.