Pirates rob boat crew docked at PoS Harbour

The cap­tain and crew of a car­go boat, which docked off the Port of Port-of-Spain on Sun­day for re­pairs, were robbed by armed men of valu­ables and equip­ment, in­clud­ing a boat en­gine.

The Gren­di­an cap­tain, along with two ship­mates from St Vin­cent and Mal­ick, Barataria, docked at the port, near the Hy­att Ho­tel, aboard the Sea Eliz­a­beth II around 10.30 pm.

They an­chored their ves­sel to a barge in the har­bour, where it was sched­uled to un­der­go re­pairs.

Short­ly af­ter, how­ev­er, the crew ob­served a par­ty of armed men climb­ing on board from an­oth­er ves­sel.

The vic­tims re­port­ed that 12 men armed with firearms, cut­lass­es and ax­es an­nounced a rob­bery af­ter board­ing the boat.

The ban­dits re­lieved the crew of sev­er­al cell­phones, a quan­ti­ty of gold and sil­ver jew­ellery, a GPS sys­tem val­ued at $16,000, a 100-pound oxy­gen tank, a 100-pound gas tank, an in­flat­able dinghy val­ued at $35,000 and one small en­gine val­ued at $20,000.

The sus­pects then fled in a pirogue in an un­known di­rec­tion.

Hours lat­er, around 5 am on Mon­day, the cap­tain again ob­served a group of men in a pirogue ap­proach­ing his ves­sel. How­ev­er, this time they tied a dinghy to it and left.

Fol­low­ing checks, he con­firmed it was the stolen dinghy and packed in­side were some of the items tak­en dur­ing the rob­bery.

These in­clud­ed the boat en­gine, the one-hun­dred-pound gas tank, one tur­bo, one black mo­tor, and one red-coloured oil pump.