Rogue bank employee planned to report to work after robbery

Jul 06, 2017 News

Suspects plotted the heist for three months
Hijacked car the night before

Once the plot to rob the Republic Bank Limited on Tuesday was successful, 24-year-old Jamal Haynes would have returned to work as if nothing had happened. His working pants were under the outfit he used to commit the act.

The only problem with his plan was that he didn’t take the phrase “Guyanese are always late” too seriously.

Kaieteur News understands that the rogue bank employee and his gang, Elton Wray, now dead and Keron Saunders, were planning on getting their hands on the night deposits since it was a three-day weekend and companies would have deposited millions or even billions into the chute.

The robbery on the bank had been planned three months before. The men even hijacked a car the night before.

As customary, a female staff was supposed to be at the bank at 07:10 on Tuesday and should have been emptying the chute and taking the cash to the vault.

According to the bandits’ plan, when they got into the bank, they would have held the staffers hostage and grabbed onto the woman who would have been emptying the chute—there they would have grabbed a few bags of cash and escaped.

Everything went according to the plan until the three bandits got into the bank and Haynes did not see his colleague who had access to the chute.

“He panicked because the woman was not around. She had not reached work so they started checking the canister for cash. They then went to the vault and were knocking on it to get it open,” a staffer at the financial institute said.

At 07:30, this newspaper was told that the woman, who the men wanted, was at the back entrance of the bank when she learnt of the commotion and went away.

Meanwhile, Haynes’s senior colleague and junior staffers were in the vaults when they saw what was happening on cameras.

They immediately called the bank’s security manager who then called the police.

By this time, the Professional Guard Services (PGS) in the vicinity reached the scene in less than a minute.

“People are saying that it wasn’t planned but it was because Jamal had the timings. There were two problems; the girl didn’t show up on time and PGS was close. If the girl was there, they would have got the cash and disappeared,” a staff member said.

He indicated that at one point management was under the impression that Haynes was mistakenly arrested by the police as one of the suspects but after reviewing the surveillance camera, the suspect’s posture and built matched that of the employee.

Jamal Haynes of Norton Street, Wortmanville, Georgetown, is being treated at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) having sustained gunshot wounds to both legs.

He was shot in a canteen at the vendor’s mall (opposite the bank) where he ran and put on an apron and started cooking in an attempt to divert the police attention.

Haynes’s relatives when contacted yesterday opted not to speak to the media. However, his grandmother on Tuesday said that she is convinced he was mistakenly held.

Meanwhile, this newspaper learnt yesterday that Haynes and Elton Wray were best friends and lived together in Eccles, East Bank Demerara.

The 25-year-old agronomist who went to China on a government scholarship worked at the National Agriculture Research Extension Institute (NAREI). He died while receiving treatment at the GPHC after being shot to the chest.

Wray, whose father is a senior Immigration Officer, had parked his car which he purchased after receiving a duty free concession at the Ruimveldt Shopping Plazza and used the car they hijacked from a taxi driver to rob the bank.

Meanwhile, the third suspect, 22-year-old Keron Saunders remains in police custody and is assisting with investigation.

Investigators are said to be checking their records to determine whether Saunders has a record since he posted large sums of cash on his Facebook page and what appeared to be a pistol. It is suspected that Saunders might have been the mastermind behind the robbery.

Investigations are ongoing.

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