Police report error; bank robbed of $11,000

We have a correction to a story we ran last night on what was described to us as an unsuccessful bank robbery. In fact, the thief who entered the Bank of Nova Scotia in Corozal Wednesday morning, was not as hapless as we made him out to be. The real story is that after handing a note to the teller which said he was armed and demanding money, the teller complied and filled his bag with close to eleven thousand dollars in cash. The robber then made his exit, but not before being identified by a security guard as one Mervin Reyes, a former BDF soldier resident in Orange Walk. Reyes, who had been picked up Monday in Belize City on a previous charge, had been returned to the Orange Walk police station but managed to escape from custody on Wednesday morning. As of this evening, he was still at large. Coincidentally, at the same time the bank job was unfolding, the bank’s manager was on the phone to the police on another matter. When alerted to the robbery the cops responded immediately, but Reyes had already departed. As for yesterday’s erroneous report, police press officer G. Michael Reid has apologised, attributing the mistake to a miscommunication between his office and the Corozal police.