A United States family with strong ties to Jamaica has written off this Caribbean island as a destination that they would visit again, following a horrific experience over a week ago.

The Woolcock family, with roots in the top food-producing parish of St Elizabeth, depart the island this weekend with bitter tongues after valuable items were stolen from them in the central Jamaica town of Mandeville on Friday, March 11.

Spokesman for the family, Damion Woolcock told the Observer in an interview that his efforts of many years spent marketing Jamaica as a safe destination with wonderful people, were crippled by the incident, which occurred outside the parking lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken, along Caledonia Avenue, around 10:30 at night.

“The whole incident has changed my mind about Jamaica,” Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based Woolcock said.

“The only thing that would make me want to come back here is to see my relatives in an emergency. My view of Jamaica has been severely tarnished,” he said.

The family of six had rented a Toyota Hiace mini bus from the Norman Manley International Airport, a day before they were due to attend the funeral of a relative, Lloyd Findlay, at Malvern in St Elizabeth.

Upon reaching the fast food outlet, five members of the family went inside to purchase food and use the restroom, leaving one inside the vehicle.

The group lost items which included US$5,500 in cash, a high-technology camera set with accessories valued at US$6,000, three DVD players, nearly all their luggage, six US passports and a computer, among other items.

“My wife, who is pregnant, was initially left in the vehicle and I had a funny feeling, so I went back outside to get her and we took turns looking at the vehicle that was parked in KFC’s parking lot…When we went back out and found that things were missing, a taxi guy said that he had seen a guy crawl through the back window of the bus and was taking things out and that’s when reality hit us. The back glass of the bus was smashed and our things were gone,” Woolcock said.

KFC has confirmed that the incident occurred at that branch.

A woman who identified herself as the team leader, but who said that she required authorisation from head office to give her name, told the Observer: “Yes, the vehicle was broken into while the family members were dining.”

While the family felt the loss of the material things, they also alleged that a KFC security guard said he had no (cellphone) credit when asked to call the police, and when the Mandeville police were eventually called, they took an hour and a half to get to the scene.

Woolcock said that his family encountered further challenges collecting a copy of the police report of the incident, which they needed to take to the United States Embassy in Kingston in order to get six new US passports, each of which cost them US$135.

Even when they were at the US Embassy the following day, he said, embassy officials called the station to request a faxed copy of the report, which was not forthcoming at the time, despite promises made.

He said he went back to Mandeville and managed to get “a report of no more than three short paragraphs, with all of our names spelt wrong”.

“My family is from here but if it were some tourists from Minnesota, they would have been left on their own, without family support,” Woolcock told the newspaper. “We brought our children back to our roots and told them of this wonderful island where we used to walk all this way to school.

“They all wanted to leave after our second day here, as some of them only had the clothes on their backs. These experiences tarnish their image of Jamaica, and if this is how tourists are being dealt with, other countries are going to warn their travellers to stay away.

“My friends all tell me that if you go to Jamaica, you are going to get robbed and I would simply chase them away. Now, I can’t even tell half of the people I know that this has happened to me, especially in Mandeville…you expect this sort of thing in Kingston,” Woolcock said.

Interestingly, Damion Woolcock’s brother, Adrian, who is based in North Carolina, is part of a team of officials working with Jamaican police on introducing information technology that could ultimately benefit the local constabulary.

“I didn’t feel that the Jamaican police were interested in our matter. They say they are overwhelmed but that is no excuse,” Damion Woolcock said.

Contacted by phone, a man who said that he worked at the station as a policeman, said he was aware of the incident and that the police were still searching for those responsible.

The Constabulary Communication Network, the police information arm, said it had no record of the incident.