Armed ban­dits robbed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) of an es­ti­mat­ed $15,000 cash when they stormed the of­fices at Clif­ford Roach Dri­ve in Bal­main, Cou­va, on Fri­day. A spokesman told Guardian Me­dia Sports that the men stormed the fa­cil­i­ty around 1.30 pm and held up the staff at gun­point be­fore open­ing a safe and mak­ing off with the cash in a wait­ing ve­hi­cle in the north­bound lane of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way.

In a re­lease, the T&TCB strong­ly con­demns the brazen and vi­o­lent rob­bery car­ried out at its of­fices by armed crim­i­nals. The re­lease said, ‘No em­ploy­ee should have to en­dure the ter­ror and trau­ma in­flict­ed by these gun­men in the course of sim­ply car­ry­ing out their du­ties.’

This dis­turb­ing in­ci­dent is an­oth­er stark re­minder that crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty con­tin­ue to threat­en the safe­ty, well­be­ing and peace of law-abid­ing cit­i­zens and in­sti­tu­tions across our na­tion. We call on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to act swift­ly and de­ci­sive­ly to bring those re­spon­si­ble to jus­tice and to strength­en mea­sures to pro­tect cit­i­zens from es­ca­lat­ing vi­o­lent crime. The re­lease stat­ed that the T&TCB stands firm­ly with its staff dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time and will pro­vide every sup­port nec­es­sary as they re­cov­er from this trau­mat­ic or­deal.”