Crime

(CNS): Full story – Police say that three masked men, two of whom were armed with what appeared to be guns, held up the downtown George Town branch of Scotia Bank this morning, Thursday 3 May. Detectives have opened an investigation into the bank robbery, which took place shortly before 11:45am. As the gunmen entered Scotia Bank in Cardinal Avenue they threatened staff and customers before making off with a sum of cash. The suspects ran off from the bank and entered their getaway vehicle – a dark blue coloured Honda Accord saloon car (pictured left and below), which was parked with a waiting driver directly outside the bank. The car was then seen to drive off towards the Eastern Avenue area.

(CNS): A 52-year-old man from West Bay who was found guilty of fracturing a man’s jaw during an altercation in a West Bay yard received a 12 month suspended sentence on Friday and was ordered to pay more than $13,000 to compensate the victim for medical expenses and loss of earnings. Owen Smith was found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on Jeremy Manderson, who had been his friend for over thirty years.  Although the court heard that the injury inflicted by Smith was considered serious, there were mitigating factors that the judge took into account that led to Smith being saved from jail.

(CNS): Police confirmed Thursday that a George Town man has been charged with theft relating to two separate insurance companies and is currently held on remand at Northward prison. David Self, a former insurance manager with Monkton Insurance Services Ltd, where he was the sole director, is accused of misappropriating around US$1 million belonging to the company and its clients, according to the firm's liquidators who filed a petition in the Grand Court this week to wind up the business, described as hopelessly insolvent. Gordon MacRae and Gwynn Hopkins of Zolfo Cooper (Cayman) Limited, the liquidators of the company, claim Self had wrongfully diverted the cash which he used for unauthorized investments and personal expenditure.

(CNS): A George Town woman was arrested at HMP Northward on Sunday after attempting to smuggle drugs in to the country’s prison. The director of the prison said that officers  intercepted the woman who was intending to visit an inmate at the prison gate lodge and found she was carrying a white powder which was suspected as being cocaine. Dwight Scott said that the police were called and the suspected contraband was handed over while following initial enquiries he female visitor was arrested and taken in custody by the RCIPS. Police confirmed investigations are continuing into the matter but the woman has since been bailed.

(CNS): The RCIPS has opened an investigation on Cayman Brac into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of two firearms from a private owner’s safe. A spokesperson for the RCIPS said Cayman Brac police received the report of the missing guns on Monday evening (23-Apr-2012) from the Brac resident. He told police that upon checking his firearm safe the weapons that were stored in it were missing. The police did not say if there had been a suspected break-in at the property or how else the pistol and the shotgun had come to be missing.

(CNS): A George Town man and former employee of the Royal Bank of Canada was found guilty on Monday afternoon of stealing more than US$29,000 from a customer’s account when he forged the signatures of clients on documents. Erick Adam was convicted on two counts by a jury of four men and three women following a trial in which he was accused of creating a fictitious couple, whom he attempted to blame for the crime. The theft, which took place in September 2009, came to light when the account holders from whom Adam had stolen the cash came to the bank to look at their fixed term deposit account and discovered it was empty.

(CNS) A 33ft boat was reportedly stolen from a dock in Mervin Street, Newlands at the weekend and the owner is offering a $1000 for its safe return. Brevon Elliott said that the boat, Risky Business, was stolen in the early hours of Saturday morning from its dock. He said the navy coloured vessel with a navy blue t-top and blue centre console has a light blue interior and has two 225hp Honda engines. Anyone with information about the stolen fishing boat is asked to contact the owner on  927-2655.

(CNS): Chief Justice Anthony Smellie handed down a prison term of 14 years to a 46-year-old George Town man on Friday for the rape of his former lover over a two year period. Philip Rose was sentenced to a further 14 years for abduction, three years for assault and 12 months for stalking his victim on the phone, all of which were ordered to run concurrently. The country’s senior judge said that Rose had “shown no indication of remorse for his crimes” and continued to see himself as a victim of the relationship. The chief justice told the convicted man that his behaviour could not be tolerated and the crimes were no less serious because he had known his victim.

(CNS): In a further shocking revelation, the RCIPS has confirmed that the Cayman Islands premier is now the subject of three police investigations. Following the statement by the governor on Friday evening that a second investigation was ongoing, apart from the one concerning the Stan Thomas letter allegedly from the premier, a police spokesperson said on Saturday that McKeeva Bush was the subject of three police probes. The police said that two involve financial irregularities and the third is related to the explosives that were imported recently into the Cayman Islands without the necessary permit. No further details were released as the police said all three enquiries were ongoing. (Photo Dennie WarrenJr)

(CNS): Financial cops are issuing a warning to people using  bank ATMs to be on the lookout for the evidence of fraudsters in the wake of at least two recent attempts to tamper with machines in George Town and copy customer's details. In recent weeks two separate machines were tampered with in the capital police stated. No customer accounts have been compromised, but officers from the RCIPS Financial Crime Unit are urging members of the public to be vigilant when using cash machines and immediately report anything suspicious. Police have not revealed which ATMs were tampered with but warn it could happen on any back cash machine.

(CNS): A 47-year-old baker has been sentenced to six years in prison over a two year swindle in which he defrauded a supermarket and his business partner in a massive bread roll con of over $300,000. Dave Bryan, who was found guilty of the fraud, was handed a five year sentence for the con perpetrated on Fosters and further 12 months for a loan he attempted to fraudulently obtain from the CIDB by forging his partner’s signature. The judge ordered that sentence to run consecutively and gave Bryan a further 12 months over a guilty plea for a charge of cheque kiting to run concurrently with the other terms.

(CNS):  Update - A man was killed and a second seriously injured in the early hours of Thursday morning when a Honda Civic traveling on the West Bay Road towards George Town left the road and overturned close to the Coral Stone Club. The driver and passenger were both thrown from the vehicle, police said, and were taken to the Cayman Islands Hospital in George Town, where the 33-year-old passenger was pronounced dead. The 28-year-old man is being treated for serious injuries and has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and suspicion of DUI. Police closed the road from Safe Haven to Canal Point in order to investigate the smash but they have now confirmed the road has opened.

(CNS): Ezzard Miller and Arden Mclean have joined concerned voices that believe Cayman’s authorities are hiding behind claims about ongoing police investigations in order to avoid revealing the details of possible corruption and other irregularities. The failure of the authorities to reveal the state of the more than two year police investigation regarding the premier and what have been described as “financial irregularities” is not the only issue that is being kept out of the public domain because of a police probe, they say. The MLAs say the latest move to hide behind another investigation concerned the alarming importation of dynamite without a licence, which they say may have political connections.

(CNS): A George Town man who is facing seven charges relating to a shooting outside Cub 7 in February was denied bail last week after the crown told the court that the charges were too serious and the evidence against him too great. Leighton Rankine (35) has been charged with two counts of attempted murder, wounding, possession of an unlicensed firearm, unlawful use of that firearm as well as common assault. The crown’s case is that police arrived on the scene while Rankine was still holding the gun used to shoot the two men in the car park of the night club.  Police recovered the weapon from the bushes on the night and arrested Rankine who was also taken to hospital as he was injured in a fight.

(CNS): Former TV personality and youth pastor, Felix Manzanares, made his first appearance in Summary Court on Tuesday in connection with an indecent assault charge. Although few details of the charges were revealed in court, the former host of Cayman27’s youth talk show, The Conversation, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman from the church where he was a preacher. No police report was ever released regarding the arrest or allegations made against Manzanares relating to the incident, which was said to have happened in December last year. After his brief appearance and the collection of documents by his attorney from the crown relating to the charges, he was bailed to return to court on 1 May.