17 Celebrity Cruises Passengers Robbed at Gunpoint in St. Kitts

[RamboLiberal]

Source: ABC News

Seventeen passengers from the ocean liner Celebrity Mercury were robbed at gunpoint Sunday while taking a bus tour of the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, the cruise line has confirmed.

In a statement, Celebrity Cruises said there were 16 adult passengers and one child on the bus. It said no one was physically harmed, and all of the guests are safely back on the ship, being offered support by the crew.

An Associated Press report said the masked gunmen escaped with the passengers' jewelry, cameras and money.

At the time of the robbery, the passengers were traveling to the Brimstone Hill Fortress, a well-visited UNESCO World Heritage Site on St. Kitts. A press person providing information on behalf of St. Kitts tourism tells Cruise Critic that the bandits "put a tree across the road to block the bus." When the bus driver got out to move the tree, two men emerged from bushes and robbed the tourists.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/17-celebrity-cruises-passengers-robbed-gunpoint-st-kitts/story?id=12151445

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I'm surprised this doesn't happen more frequently.

[htuttle]

1. "...and they were dressed like giant bees and kept menacing us with their antennae."

Seems like they went through a lot of trouble and planning for not very much loot. I bet they're very local to where it happened. Probably see the tour bus drive by all the time.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. here is a pic of one of them...

[onenote]

9. Curious why you think it wasn't much "loot"?

And how much planning does it take to put a tree across a road?

[rfranklin]

2. If only they had been armed...

We could have been reading about a bunch of dead people.

[TheCowsCameHome]

4. ...with coconuts.

[awoke_in_2003]

7. we did coconuts last week. nt

[jdlh8894]

3. Saint Kitts-Caribbean??

Great reporting. Guess the reporter has never been close to the Atlantic.

[Dirigo]

5. E-gads I've Been On That Same Bus

By the grace of God go I. This is a very harrowing experience for tourists clad in Bermudas to visit the Brimstone Fortress and buy some trinkets. The bus used to also stop to let you look at monkeys along the way. St Kitts is really quite beautiful but with repeat performances such as this one will result in the Port of Call to be eliminated for safety. The island will really feel the cruiseships absence and they'll be left to live with their own thieves, thugs, and castoffs.

[onenote]

8. isn't St. Kitts bounded by the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic on the other?

I would imagine most people consider St.Kitts a Caribbean location.

[RamboLiberal]

11. On the windjammer cruise I took it was considered Caribbean

I thought it was a shame how economically poor it seemed to be then (mid-80's).

[bluedigger]

10. These islands live on tourism.

You can be darn sure that the authorities will leave no stone unturned in going after these banditos. Their entire economy depends on it.

[jberryhill]

12. A very few wealthy folks on most of those islands live on tourism

The rest live in poverty and better stay in line. Absolutely these bandits will be strung up.

There are some notable exceptions, but St. Kitts is one of the worst in terms of social inequality.