‘Daylight Robbery’

Chris Carpenter, Public Relations Officer, Deloitte	Adrian Seales, RCIPS Press Liaison

Thursday,  July 14, 2005

Crime paid a call on Cayman’s corporate offices on Tuesday 12 July, in the commercial centre of George Town, just as executives in the country’s business district were pushing through the company glass doors and walking in to face the day.

For officers of Trident Trust Company (Cayman) Limited and the accounting firm Rawlinson and Hunter, an attack on their personal belongings was the farthest thing from their minds when they arrived at work around 8:00 pm to attack the day.

Described as a theft because the perpetrator of the act used no force to enter the premises and, as well, did not use a weapon to carry out his deed, the event still had the effect of adding to the rapidly increasing list of criminal incidents in the Cayman Islands and spreading the strange and repulsive odour of crime throughout the country.

Described as a crime of opportunity because of the way in which the perpetrator gained access to the premises and managed to carry out his act, fingers are again pointing to newcomers to the Islands or foreign nationals here without work and without any relatives or other means of sustaining themselves.

According to Adrian Seales, a representative of the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) Media Liaison Office:

“Two incidents of theft occurred in two separate offices at One Capital Place. At 8:00 am an employee entered the building and went to the third floor. Another person came in, unnoticed, behind her and took cash, cigarettes, sunglasses and the like from her handbag when she left it by her workstation in the reception area of that office.

“The same person apparently went up to the fourth floor and stole money from another handbag. In the end one handbag was recovered but the person escaped with the money and other items.”

Christopher Carpenter, Public Relations (PR) Officer for Deloitte – a company that also occupies the building at that location – described the incident as unfortunate and said: “It was a very opportunistic thief, one who made his way into the common points of the building like the general reception areas where security guards would not necessarily be.

“It is unfortunate that someone pounces in this way, especially when it is something we are unaccustomed to here in the Cayman Islands.”

On the day preceding this event another shooting incident was recorded in the Island – again, in the very heart of the city. The incident, much more violent than the one on the following morning, involved masked men opening fire – shooting through the rear windshield and right rear door of a parked car, firing at least five times. In the incident, passengers in the vehicles sustained injuries to legs, back and other parts of the body.

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