A Riviere Mittant woman has said she is living in fear after a group of men attempted to burglarise her home on Tuesday, June 4, 2014.
Though she was at work at the time, Cecile Bruno said the news that four men had jumped from a pickup holding a scaffold and ladder and attempted to gain access to her home at Riviere Mittant, Gros Islet, left her in a state of shock.
The incident, according to her in an interview with Saint Lucia News Online (SNO), occurred at about 1:35 p.m.
“My neighbour called me and asked if I sent anybody to paint for me. I said no. She told me there are four guys in a green van who said they came to paint for me … The two of them went to the back of the house and two stayed at the front. They were already putting their ladder and scaffold down and everything … Two neighbours were watching them and they said they gonna finish another job [somewhere else and] they would be back,” Bruno told SNO.
She said two of the men were able to enter her house from the back.
“So when the neighbour said, ‘you all come and paint, [no] that’s robbery that there’, they just left. They just put the scaffold back in the van and everything and then they left,” Bruno told SNO.
Bruno said the men were described as two rastas, a “red-skinned feller” and “another tall one.”
The vehicle the men used was described as a green van with some pink outline at the bottom. The men did not take anything from her home. She was adamant that she does not know any of them and never invited anyone to work on her home.
According to Bruno, there was no number plate at the back of the pickup, but there was one at the front which was difficult to decipher based on how it was parked.
Bruno recalled that exactly two years ago thieves had taken everything at her house in a similar manner. “And this afternoon, exactly two years after, they came back.”
The woman explained that she had installed burglar bars in certain areas of her home.
She said she has since learnt of a similar incident which occurred to someone in her neighbourhood last year. The owner had received a call while at work and was informed that someone was in his home but when he rushed there the robber had already gone.
Speaking about today’s incident Bruno told SNO, “People have to be careful these days … That shocking me. I cannot eat; I cannot sleep. Right now, I don’t know exactly what to do again.”
She lives with her boyfriend.
Police are investigating.