SERGEANT Gladys Brown-Campbell was yesterday seriously injured by a knife-wielding robber after she tried to stave off attempts to rob her as she left an automated banking machine along King Street in downtown Kingston.

The injured cop, who received a serious laceration to her stomach as well as a number of stab wounds, was admitted to hospital.

The police reported that at about 2.30 yesterday afternoon, Sergeant Brown-Campbell was attacked by a man demanding money after she left the ABM across the road from the Supreme Court.

According to the police report, during an ensuing struggle the cop was slashed across her belly but managed to hurl her attacker onto the roadway and they both fell to the ground. Brown-Campbell then fought her attacker bravely but was eventually stabbed a number of times by the thief, who made off with an undetermined sum of money, which fell from her purse, and her cellular telephone.

Brown-Campbell, who is on secondment to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, from the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), where she worked for four years, just this weekend graduated from the Norman Manley Law school as the first local policewoman to qualify as a lawyer.

Superintendent Ione Ramsay, head of the CCN, told the Observer that her colleague was alive because of her superb physical condition.

"She keeps herself in good shape and goes to the gym and jogs everyday. If she was not in good shape she would have died," Ramsay said.

"It is only a coward who would attack a woman that way and I am glad she whipped him good and proper. There are some lazy people in society who won't work and sit and wait on working people to relieve them of what they have," said Superintendent Ramsay.

She also had some advice for people who use automated banking machines. "We have to be on the alert all the time. When you go into these places make sure you are not being followed and if necessary have someone wait on you or accompany you."

Just more than two years ago, Joan Hollingsworth, an employee of the Jamaica Bureau of Standards, was stabbed to death after she was robbed at an ABM in Half Way Tree.

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