Burglary in Punta Gorda

An elderly night watchman was bound at the wrists and ankles during and armed robbery in Punta Gorda Town which briefly netted a pair of thieves over thirty thousand dollars on Monday night.  PG police were summoned to James Store on Jose Maria Nunez Street sometime around nine o’clock.  There, they discovered sixty-three-year-old Domingo Pop Choc, a Guatemalan national, suffering from severe injuries to the face and upper body.  The responding officers were then alerted that the men, twenty-four-year-old Eleazar Coc and twenty-four-year-old Job Cab, were still inside the premises.  When police moved to the rear of the building they were met with gunfire.  A brief exchange then ensued before the assailants fled the scene on foot.  When the officers returned to the store they found a knapsack containing an undisclosed sum of money in an adjacent parking lot.  Business owner Hui Cong Chen later identified the bag which contained thirty-one thousand, one hundred and seventy-two dollars in Belizean currency.  Inside was also five thousand U.S. dollars in cash.  Other items recovered include an assortment of cigarettes, phone cards, lighters deodorants and cell phones.  Four persons remain in custody pending the outcome of an investigation, two others are being sought.