A man was forced to withdraw money from an ATM machine, while the woman he was with was held at gunpoint by two armed men who broke into a house in Harmony Hill.
The Harmony Hill resident, accompanied by a female friend, went to his daughter’s house to feed a dog as his daughter was apparently out of town.
Arriving at the house, they noticed that the door lock had been tampered with.
Suddenly, two armed men ordered the couple into the house.
The woman was held at gunpoint by one robber, while the man was forced to drive to an ATM machine to withdraw cash by the other armed man.
Typical of Bahamian banks, the ATM machine was broken. So, the robber made the man drive to another machine and make three withdrawals, each for $300.
As the man was driving the robber back to the house, a quick-thinking neighbor spotted the man driving and saw another man’s head pop up from the back seat.
He followed the car back to the home and saw the robbers loading a flat screen TV into a Mitsubishi Lancer.
Thinking all that was suspicious, the neighbor alerted the newly formed “Flying Squad”, a neighborhood watch group, and also called police.
Two police cars arrived quickly and, with the neighborhood watch group, blocked the road.
Getting nervous, the two robbers held the woman at gunpoint and told the man to go outside and tell everyone that all was fine.
Moments later, both the man and the woman came running out of the house and said the robbers had run out the back door.
Police pursued the men but did not catch them.
Later, they did pick up a man for questioning but it is not clear if he was one of the two armed robbers.
This alarming incident is only one of several such crimes occuring in the once safe neighborhood.
Car thefts, assaults, robberies, home invasions and burglaries are becoming weekly events.
Police say they do not have enough cars or officers to combat the ever-growing levels of crime.
