The Tribune

A BAHAMIAN today told a reporter the horror story of how she and three of her friends were held up on Christmas eve by two men on motorbikes, who tried to get into their car and rob them.

She also told of how passing motorists took pictures on their cell phones of them being violently attacked, but never stopped to help. Eventually a passing police car saw what was happening and stopped the attack. However, she claimed, the officers made no attempt to get the names or identification of their attackers.

She said that she and her friends — two men and two women – were driving on Tonique Williams Darling Highway around 7.20pm on Saturday, December 24, last year when they were stopped in traffic in the westbound lane outside the Shell gas station at the Bahamian Paint roundabout.

Their male driver had just picked up his girlfriend and three other friends — herself included— to drop them home from work before going home himself. Their first stop was the Cable Beach area. The three women were sitting on the left passenger side of a right hand drive car.

Suddenly, two black men on motorbikes pulled up on the left side of the car and tapped on the back window. They then moved to the car’s front door which was locked. The robbers forced it open, pushed themselves into the car to grab the ladies handbags that were visible in the centre of the car.

There was a struggle, with the car’s occupants managing to push the robbers out of the car and lock the door.

As the traffic cleared they drove forward but the car’s front fender came off, getting stuck under the car. They stopped to repair the fender. Suddenly their two motorbike attackers reappeared.

They smashed the car’s back window with a metal bat. They abandoned their motorbikes in the road while they forced the driver’s side door open and dragged the driver out of the car. The driver was badly beaten by one of the robbers. He was punched in his lower back, face and around his eyes, suffering internal and external injuries.

The second robber, who had the metal bat, crawled into the car, but was pushed out by the three remaining passengers.

Their attackers were described as under 25 years of age, “rough looking and poorly dressed - one of them was tall and muscular.”

The victims do not think the robbers knew them. They believe they were victims of an attack by men on motorbikes who saw women in the car.

The motorists were eventually rescued by police in a passing police car that saw what was happening and stopped the attack.

One of the victim’s described the police investigation as “a joke”.

They claimed that the police did not take the names of the robbers. Nor did they ask them for an ID, driver’s licence, vehicle registration, licence plates. However, they told the robbers to drive to the Cable Beach police station. Instead the carjackers got on their motorbikes and rode off as the police got back into their car.

The police followed the victims to the Cable Beach police station to file a report and make certain that they were safe.

At the station, said one of the victims, the officers taking the report commented that the arresting officers had acted against protocol by not arresting the carjackers on the spot for assault and battery, nor taking their weapons, handcuffing them and getting other pertinent information.

The station officers then issued an All Points Bulletin to try to find the culprits.

While filing their report at the police station, the victims heard a report over the police radio of another incident at the same place near the Shell Gas Station on Tonique Williams Darling Highway around the same time. However, the report said that these robbers were armed with a bat, and were driving a jeep. It was not know whether the two incidents were related.

The victims gave their statements to the police, returned to their homes, but have heard no more from the police. As far as they are aware, their attackers have not been identified.