Vendor robbed, nobody helps

As investigators will tell you, many robberies like chain snatching and purse grabbing are never reported to the police. But in the latest incident to occur in Belize City, the victim has come forward. She is thirty-four year old Martha Garcia, a fruit vendor stationed at the corner of Church and Albert Streets. According to Garcia, around two-thirty on Tuesday afternoon, a man pretending to be a customer robbed her. But Garcia says the worse part of her story is that in the middle of the afternoon on a busy downtown street, no one answered her cry for help.

Martha Garcia, Robbery Victim
“Same time I turn fi get the two red apples, he come grab my lee dish and he gawn run and he left the bike right deh, he park it ahead then he grab the bike and jump pan the bike and gawn. I follow he and tell ah bring mi small change because yu di ker mi small change, I halla tief. The same time he gawn; after that he noh pass back again this side.”

Janelle Chanona
“Did you yell for help, out here is pretty busy?”

Martha Garcia
“Nobody give me a help. Only me di follow di man. Ah id try get my small change. I can’t do nothing better than that.”

Janelle Chanona
“And everybody just di watch?”

Martha Garcia
“Yes, everybody fraid fu the man because nobody give me wah help.”

Janelle Chanona
“Have you seen this man before? Would you be able to recognize him?”

Martha Garcia
“Well I can’t recognize the man because I no see ih face, I busy here because I di cut some fruit, I busy noh. That’s why I neva see the man face.”

Garcia estimates that she had approximately four hundred dollars in coins in her money dish. Tonight police are on the lookout for the thief, described as a thin dark-skinned man with a scar on his left elbow.