‘We’ve only just begun’
WHITEHOUSE, St James – The police on Tuesday held a man in connection with the alleged theft of millions of dollars worth of lobsters from the Whitehouse Fisherfolk Cooperative.
The man, a native of the Dominican Republic, has been charged with simple larceny, Constable Shamar Grant of the Marine Police told the Observer West yesterday. He is scheduled to be brought before the St James Resident Magistrate’s Court tomorrow.
The arrest pleased the executive of the cooperative.
“We are pleased with the arrest. We have been looking for this arrest from last month, two days after we caught them, but sometimes you just have to wait on the Good Lord, until the time is right,” said Troy Jumpp, president of the cooperative.
According to Jumpp, the executive intends to pull out all the stops in order to secure justice for the victims of the theft.
“We are talking about lobsters that we have been losing since last year in November and we are going to go the extra mile to get justice,” he told the Observer West yesterday.
According to Jumpp, he along with other members of the executive waylaid the thieves on October 11.
“Sure enough we saw two men – natives of the Dominican Republic – whom we later found out worked for a company here dive down and steal our lobsters. We caught them red-handed,” he said.
According to Jumpp, after they reported the matter to the Marine police and the Coral Gardens Police Station, the men offered to settle the matter by paying for the stolen crustaceans, which are considered a delicacy, especially in the hotel industry.
However, the talks which took place in the boardroom of a Spanish hotel here never translated to the promised payment of J$1.5 million.
“We had the meeting at the hotel and came to an agreement with the help of the hotel’s Human Resource department, whereby the money would be distributed to the victims of this theft. Right after we left I began to get calls from the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) saying that we were extorting and harassing the hotel for money and threatening to bomb it up. Then we heard that the thieves had left the island for the Dominican Republic. Next we heard that they were still here. So before it got any worse we put it in the hands of our lawyers,” Jumpp told the Observer West last week.
In the meantime, investigations into the matter are continuing, according to Constable Grant.
