Alvin Shaquille Ebanks has been convicted of robbing the Hell Esso service station with a toy gun in December 2022.
Unanimous guilty verdicts were returned against Ebanks on Friday, 17 March, on one count of robbery and another count of possession of an imitation firearm, after the jury deliberated for two-and-a-half hours.
In CCTV video of the robbery, Ebanks, who is said to have been the main robber, together with another man who was never identified, stormed into the service station as a customer was buzzed in through the electronically locked doors.
In the video, Ebanks’ face was covered entirely by a blue mask and he was wearing a black-and-white checkered jacket.
After rushing in, he headed to the cashier and, although no audio was played, it was clear that he demanded money from the employee at gunpoint.
A brief struggle ensued before Ebanks hit the man with the gun, causing it to break apart, and the employee then retreated to a corner. Then Ebanks hastily opened the till and grabbed the cash before fleeing, together with the second robber, to the getaway car parked a few feet from the gas station.
During the trial, the prosecution told the jury that Ebanks, who had been out on bail, managed to commit the robbery undetected despite being fitted with an electronic monitoring tag, by using aluminium foil to disrupt the tag’s tracking system.
Although Ebanks’ face and hands were covered, the prosecution was still able to tie him to the scene due to DNA evidence recovered from partially burnt clothes found a short distance from Ebanks’ home that matched what the robber was wearing.
Ebanks denied the robbery and claimed that when police arrived at his house he ran away to remove the ounce of ganja that he had kept there for his personal use.
Following the guilty verdict, Ebanks was remanded into custody and will return for sentencing in the coming weeks.
The robbery was one of 47 such incidents reported to the RCIPS during 2022, making it the most active year in Cayman’s recorded history.
The sustained string of criminal activity forced the RCIPS to ‘collapse’ all non-essential services and redeploy plainclothes officers and detectives on the streets in the hopes of quelling the surge in crime.
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