Gunmen grab cash, dinner in Berbice gas station heist

Sep 15, 2014 News

– surveillance cameras capture incident

Two masked gunmen escaped with an undisclosed sum of money,two cellular phones, and two bags containing workers’ dinner after storming a West Berbice GuyOil Gas Station on Saturday evening.
The incident was captured on the eight surveillance cameras placed around the premises of Arif’s Service Station of Onderneeming, West Coast Berbice.

Arif’s Service Station

Four employees were on duty during the 19:57hrs invasion, namely: Tasha Goodman, Sancho Chaitram, Nicola Blair and Isaac (only name given).
Only one employee, Blair, could have spoken since the other three were very traumatized. Blair, while relating the 10- minute ordeal, stated that the gunmen seemed to have been waiting to attack at a time when there were no customers. They pulled up with a heavily- tinted Silver Bluebird car just after a rush- hour of customers. The bandits’ faces were covered with stockings.
Blair stated that she and Goodman were counting cash and observed one of the men, armed with a gun, heading towards her. Her colleagues were stationed near the gas pump, and they too were helpless as the other bandit, armed with a knife held them up.
“The man said, ‘nobody move! Freeze!’, and I jumped up and put my hand up and he had the gun pointing to me and then I put all the money on the table,” she stated. She gave the men $20,000.
Meanwhile, the other bandit was tending to the other two employees, commanding them to stay put and be quiet. He also demanded more cash. The gunman with Blair then saw two bags nearby, which he thought were full of money, and then picked them up. Little did he know the bags had the employees’ dinner. “They lifted up the bag and felt it was heavy and they took the boys’ bags and left,” Blair related. Two cellular phones were in the bags as well.
The bandits left in the car which was waiting for them. They drove in the direction of Georgetown.
The workers frantically called for the police at the Fort Wellington Police Station, located a minute away, but were reportedly unsuccessful in contacting anyone. “The one girl called, but I am not sure they answered,” she related. As a result, Blair took a car and went to the station. The police eventually arrived, took fingerprints and questioned the employees.

Two surveillance cameras and the alarm horn above a section of the gas station

Ms. Fareha Hanif, the proprietrix, believes that the actions of the bandits were carefully timed. “Everybody was selling and they waited until no vehicles were there— they were monitoring the place. The workers were busy like for the past hour.”
She stated, too, that the gunmen went straight for the alarm system and destroyed it just after arriving on the premises. The alarm would have been equipped with a switch that the employees can press to activate a siren placed around the gas station. “Apparently, they had some sort of tip- off or something— we had an alarm system and they came and threw the alarm away.”
Hanif added that the gas station was targeted numerous times, but this was the most serious occasion.
(Leon Suseran)