Bandits snatch $1.5M, loaded firearm from businesswoman

Jan 20, 2017 News

– Taxi driver shot; One suspect held

By Brushell Blackman

In a daring midday robbery yesterday, bandits snatched a bag containing $1.5M, a loaded

The robbery victim, Elda Belle, providing details to a detective.

firearm and three smartphones, from 41-year-old Elda Belle of Queenstown Georgetown outside Jialing Motors at Charlotte and Oronoque Streets, Georgetown.
Taxi driver, Richard Bellamy, who was transporting the woman, was shot in the left leg and is now a patient at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
According to information received by this publication, Belle, a businesswoman in the mining sector, along with her regular taxi driver, Bellamy, left her Queenstown home sometime around 10am yesterday to collect a cheque from a mining company at another location in the city.
The distraught woman related that upon leaving there, she and her driver proceeded to Republic Bank on Water Street to cash the cheque. She said she spent some time in the bank and when her business there was completed she proceed to Jialing Motors.
It was upon arrival at the location that the less than two-minute ordeal began to unfold.
The woman said that as soon as she exited the taxi, someone behind her asked her something which she couldn’t recall what the question was. According to her, when she turned around she was looking into the barrel of a gun. It is believed that the taxi driver upon seeing this attempted to come to the aid of the woman and was shot in the leg. According to a female eyewitness, she only realized that something serious was happening when she heard what sounded like a ‘big truck’ slamming its door.
But she quickly realized it was a gunshot.
“When I looked over I saw the guy (bandit) with the gun in the air. He was tall and slim, and he wore a sky blue jersey with a short blue pants.”
The woman said that one bandit carried out the robbery while a blue Toyota AT 212 car, with what turned out to be fake number plates, HB 5918, was parked close by with an accomplice.

‘A’ Division Commander Clifton Hicken at the scene

The eyewitness said that the woman struggled fiercely with the bandit, with one of the four-wheel All-Terrain Vehicles located in front of the store, leaning on her. The bystander said the men were very calm and they did not conceal their faces.
After snatching the victim’s bag, the bandit walk briskly back to the getaway car and it sped away south along Oronoque and turned east onto South Road and disappeared.
A security guard attached to Jialing Motors said that when he saw the men and realized they were armed, he initially retreated from the doorway where he stood, because he was unarmed.
“I wasn’t armed, so when I see the gun I quickly went inside and tell me boss.”
The guard recounted that shortly after the taxi driver stumbled into the store clutching his leg, with blood pouring down, and he was quickly rushed to the hospital.
Meanwhile, ‘A’ Division Commander Clifton Hicken, who was quickly on the scene, told the media that a .32 calibre warhead and spent shell were recovered inside the establishment. He also said that the police will be looking at CCTV footage from the cameras around.
The police later arrested an Albouystown man in connection with the robbery. From all indications the woman had been staked out and trailed from the bank. This is a worrying trend and adds to the list of robberies where victims were apparently followed from banks. It was on December 15, 2016, that a Security guard was shot and $2.5M stolen after the man was trailed from the bank. Another man was shot and robbed of $3M in the Finance Ministry compound after he too was followed from a bank.

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