The police have arrested a man suspected to have driven the two bandits who stormed the Diamond Fire Station yesterday and held five firemen at gunpoint before escaping with over $100,000 and a phone.
According to fireman Shemroy Shaw, around 1.15 pm, 15 minutes after he made his last entry in the station’s log book, he saw two men trying to enter the Fire Station yard. “…So I went and asked them what’s going on and what ya’ll coming in here for,” he related, adding that one of the men told him they were doing a survey, while the other walked around him.
“…By the time… I turn around, he pull out a big long gun and seh shut yuh mouth don’t say nothing. After I see the gun I stepped back and they took me into the room and sat me down,” Shaw said. He added that both men were armed with “big pistols.”
One of the bandits started heading to the other rooms where his colleagues were. “After he put me to sit down, he turned back and started looking where the other one was going, so I try to move and he turned back fast and said, ‘don’t move’ and he locked the doors,” Shaw added.
The other bandit roamed the station until he found fireman Orin Bancroft.
“I was in the kitchen,” Bancroft related, “and the others were in the room and he come and put the gun to my head and brought me in the room where the two others were. But when he was bringing me I notice he ain’t behind me anymore so I sprint out straight through the gate and run on the road.”
Bancroft said he started flagging down cars on the road and informing the drivers that the station was being robbed. But then one of the bandits ran out of the station with his gun, which prompted Bancroft to run in an easterly direction until he was at a safe distance from the man.
While this was happening outside, the bandit inside rounded up the rest of the men and forced them all to lie on their stomachs in the room where Shaw was, while he ransacked the room. After a few seconds, he kicked Shaw in his stomach and ran out of the yard.
From his safe vantage point, Bancroft saw when the second bandit exited the station and the two started running west along the Diamond Public Road. “So I rush back and jump in my car and rush behind them, but they buss through School Street. I called the police and they responded fast and chased behind the men,” Bancroft said.
According to a police source, they followed a car which was suspected to have the two perpetrators. When it reached the cane field, they jumped out and ran through the vegetation. The driver was not able to escape and is currently in police custody assisting with the investigation. It was not until Bancroft returned to the station that he realized the men had taken a haversack with money which another fireman had collected from the credit union, along with his phone.
The firemen were baffled as to why bandits would attack the station.
Bancroft explained that earlier in the morning he had visited Republic Bank just outside the community where he withdrew over $700,000, which was not taken by the bandits since it was in his clothes. He wasn’t sure whether he was followed, since he reached the station around 8.30 am. However, the other firemen are speculating that he was, but because of the time of the day and the amount of traffic on the road, the men waited until the right time to attack them.
