Third suspect held inMoBay heist
WESTERN BUREAU — Police investigating Monday’s $700,000 robbery in Montego Bay yesterday held a third suspect who led them to the body of another man they believe played a major role in the daring mid-morning heist.
As a result of yesterday’s developments, the police say they are now able to account for all six men who were involved in the robbery.
“Three have died and three are now in custody,” Deputy Superintendent of Police, Derrick Knight, told the Observer.
Knight said the third suspect, who was held by the police during an operation in the Roehampton district of St James, took the cops to the decomposing body of the man believed to have been his crony.
“We were on an operation this morning in Roehampton and we held a man and recovered a .357 Magnum (from him) and he took us to where the body was,” Knight said yesterday.
The body was found at about 7:00 am in an advanced state of decomposition in bushes along Barnett Street in the western resort city.
“We have theorised that during the shoot-out with the police and the robbers on Monday, the man was shot by the police,” Knight told the Observer.
He added that the suspect admitted to taking the firearm from the dead man after the police shot him on Monday.
The suspect, Knight said, will face an identification parade sometime next week.
At about 10:00 am on Monday, the six robbers entered the Easy Access Plaza’s administrative office on Barnett Street, held up and robbed the workers of the lottery outlet of $700,000 in cash.
The bandits also stripped the workers of their jewellery and stole four cellular phones before leaving the office.
But they were challenged by three armed security guards, with whom they exchanged gunfire in what turned into a running gunfight between the six thieves and cops. Two of the thieves entered a car parked outside the building, while the other four ran across the shallow Barnett River then disappeared into bushes in the Westgreen area.
Shortly afterwards, a unit from the Montego Bay Crime Task Force, which was in the area, joined in pursuit of the gunmen. Following a running gun battle in the residential community, three men were found with gunshot wounds. They were taken to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where two of them were pronounced dead and the other admitted under police guard.
A fourth man was found partially naked hiding in bushes while the other two reportedly escaped.
One of the escapees was reportedly held in Clarendon on Tuesday.