Cruise Bruise Blog
October 17, 2009
October 17, 2009
Nassau Police Hide 11 Cruise Ship Pax Robbery Connection To Earlier Heists
If you read the media reports regarding the 11 American cruise ship passengers robbed this past Sunday, you will believe it was an isolated event. If you listen to the American Embassy official statement on this incident, you will also believe it was an isolated event.
Now, you get the truth. The attack on 11 cruise ship passengers was not an isolated incident, and law enforcement in the Bahamas know the two men, one armed with a gun, have attacked around the same time of day exactly two weeks before the cruise ship passengers were attacked.
It is this connection to what is now beginning to be seen as a "spree crime", the police are trying to conceal from cruise ship passengers and land-based tourists. The crimes, bold, blatant, done in the light of day on a Sunday threaten tourists' security in the tourism zone.
The group of 11 cruise ship passengers were robbed this past Sunday, October 11, 2009 around 1100 hours as the group stood at the top of the landmark Queen's Staircase of 66 Steps.
The ship though not named, was one of the three ships in the Port Of Nassau that day, Carnival Glory, Carnival Imagination or Majesty Of The Seas. If not for one other very telling fact, it might just seem like an accidental omission of the ship name.
But, the robbery was excluded from the daily crime report the Royal Bahamas Police Force fills out every day. If it is not on the record, it did not happen. This was not an accident, it was the clearest case of a cover-up I have ever seen.
The passengers were on a taxi cab tour of the capital's historic sites when two masked men robbed them. One man held a gun on them, the other collected their cash and valuables.
The group had been picked up from the port at Prince George Wharf Cruise Ship Terminal downtown for a taxi tour of Fort Charlotte, Fort Fincastle, the watertower and the Queen's Staircase when they were robbed.
The most important fact about this story is the get-a-way vehicle. It was identified by witnesses at the Wendy's as a "green Toyota Avalon". This is not New York City or Los Angeles, it is Nassau. Nassau has a population of 260,000 residents located on the island of New Providence that has an area of 128 square miles. This is roughly an area size of about 11 miles by 11 miles.
You can't make a run for it and go very far. The police using several vehicles, could drive every street on the island in a matter of a few hours to locate that "green Toyota Avalon". Yet, two weeks later, still free to rob again, 11 passengers are robbed, with the thugs getting bolder. We have a robbery spree and a conspiracy to conceal it. This is something visitors to Nassau need to know.
A month earlier, Wendy Bullard, 34, was killed around 1200 hours on August 21, 2009 during a robbery at her workplace, 21st Century Steel Welding Limited near Royal Palm Street and Montrose Avenue.
This robbery was located about a half mile from the Wendy's Restaurant and a mile from the Queen's Staircase. All three of the robberies are within a mile and half of the cruise ship terminal, in the heart of the tourism district.
Witnesses said that two men wearing masks, one with a gun, shot Bullard, the mother of three children, in the face during the robbery. She was the 54th murder of the year.
The high murder rate has many locals calling for renewal of the death penalty, specifically by a hanging death. They are fed up with the terror the island has been seeing and have increased demands that the government do something.
You see the results since August 21, more robberies, by two men with a similar method of operation, but the victims were not murdered. While it used to be considered safe in tourist areas during daylight hours, there is no longer a safe time of day or day of the week to avoid a violent crime in Nassau.
In 2002, Carnival Cruise Lines abandoned its stopover on Caribbean neighbor St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, population 60,000, after too many passengers and at least one crew member became victims of violent robberies there. Carnival pulled Victory and Triumph and Holland America Line pulled Zuiderdam after four incidents of violent crimes involving passengers.
Back on Sunday, September 27th, around 1100 hours, two masked men, one with a gun, entered the Wendy's Restaurant on Mackey Street, jumped over the counter and flashed their gun.
The employees fearing for their lives, ran to the back of the store, leaving the cash registers for the robbers. The two men left with two cash register draws with an unknown amount of money inside then escaped in a green Toyota Avalon they had left parked outside.
In that attack, they likely got very little cash, because the store had only been open for a few minutes, and would only have the change bank inside, and not much else.
The method of this crime is exactly the same as the cruise ship passenger robbery. It was the same day of the week, a Sunday, exactly two weeks prior to the cruise ship passenger attack, the same time of the day, about 1100 hours, two masked men, one with a gun. There could not be a clearer connection.
