$270,000 gone in Cayo bank robbery
The conventional wisdom is that there could never be a major bank robbery in Belize because the robbers wouldn’t have anywhere to unobtrusively spend such a large amount of Belize dollars. Well, times have changed and as I speak a small group of clever crooks is now trying to figure our just how to dispose of over a quarter million dollars in cash taken from the San Ignacio branch of the Belize Bank. They managed to pull off the caper, not by brandishing a gun, but by digging a tunnel. Ann-Marie Williams is just back from San Ignacio with the details.
A.S.P. Clifford Martinez, O.I.C., San Ignacio Police
“I’ve heard people saying that one of these days people might break inside that bank through the same drain that is being used at this time.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“It’s the kind of incident you hear about only in the movies. But over the weekend life imitated art when approximately $270,000 was heist from the Belize Bank right here in San Ignacio. Police have no suspects so far.”
No one is able to establish exactly when that bank was robbed. One thing the Officer in Charge of the San Ignacio Police Station, Assistant Superintendent Clifford Martinez, is sure of though is that it happened over the Baron Bliss Day weekend, as the bank’s last day was Thursday at 1:00 p.m.
Clifford Martinez
“About 7:45 this morning we received a call from the bank stating that somebody had broken inside the Belize Bank here in San Ignacio. Police went there and observed that there was a hole inside the vault room about a foot in diameter, that had been? what I would say bore through the room.”
“There’s a drain that leads straight towards the bank and this drain passes under the bank. We figure that was the area that was used by the culprits. We figure that is the same area that was used to come out of the bank to transport the money. We say dollar coins, twenty-five cents along the way leading from the hole in the bank towards the parking lot.”
“We also found two acetylene tanks. We suspect that these tanks were used to drill the hole inside the bank maybe or the safe inside the bank. The safe that contains the cash were burnt, presumably with the torch.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“I know the investigation has only just begun, but looking at this situation, would it be an inside job or somebody who had knowledge of exactly where the vault is?”
Clifford Martinez
“I wouldn’t say that this is an inside job, but we figure that somebody knew where the vault was, as they went direct to the area where the vault and where the safe is kept.”
Forensic experts were this afternoon called in to fingerprint the area. Police have also recovered the acetylene tanks allegedly used by the robbers to blowtorch the vault. Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
At news time police report that two men had been detained for questioning.
