I was out and about on my scooter today at lunch time and a bunch of cop cars went screaming past me on North Sound Road, sirens blaring. A few minutes later, another cop on a bike and another cruiser behind him passed me doing about 70mph on the Harquail Bypass. I got home and made some lunch and was sitting on the balcony looking at the water when I heard MORE sirens heading north and an ambulance, too. I figured it was a big traffic accident or maybe they were filming season six of "24" here in Cayman.

A couple minutes later, Seb IMd me and said that the Cayman National Bank in West Bay had been robbed by gunmen. Later on when I got back to work, I heard that not only had they robbed the place at gunpoint, but also that a security guard had been shot. Later I heard it was a gardener, who was working on the landscaping. At this point, it's all rumor and conjecture. I'm sure there will be something about it in the paper on Monday, but until then, the rumors will travel down West Bay Road faster than the traffic does.

I went to the CNB downtown on my way back to work to pick up a draft and PIN my new debit card that finally showed up, and when I walked into the lobby, the doors were closed. There were two security guards there, and you had to go through the bypass lobby, and pretty much brush past both security guards to get into the customer service area of the bank. I don't blame them for the extra security, the guys in West Bay got away, and who knows, maybe they thought they had enough luck to go 2-for-2. The customer service agent said that there was a cop car parked outside for the last hour or so, but had just left a few moments before.

The only question remains is "Why didn't they catch these hooded robbers last time and avoid all this in the first place? it's not like their faces were unknown to the entire public at large..."

OK, OK, it's a bad image. It's a 20 year old newspaper page that was photocopied a few times. One of these days I'll go down there and get a good copy and update this photo, now that I know what date it is. For now, squint.

UPDATE: The Cayman Compass has an article posted up about it under the heading "breaking news" that they posted yesterday afternoon. Realizing that they were sucking the hind tit and got scooped, the Net News posted something up a little later on.

I headed out to McCoy's last night, late, and John said it took him 90 minutes to get from West Bay to George Town, as there was a police roadblock just north of the Yacht Club that was stopping and searching vehicles. The roadblock was gone last night when he headed home, but apparently it's back up again this morning, with traffic backed up for an hour or so again. But what I don't get is why they took it down and then put it back up again? Isn't that like closing the barn door, then leaving it open, and then going back to close it again after? Who knows how many horses got out of the barn?? Someone else IM'd me about that and said "I guess the key to getting away with something here is to wait for the police to get tired and go home for the day first"