The modus operandi It’s always the same: hidden in the bushes, the thieves wait for the bus to stop in front of the train line, they jump on the vehicle, open the boot area and steal part of the luggage. The railway crossing of the town of Quesada, in Ciego de Ávila, is a dangerous place for travelers and the problem is not from now.
This Wednesday, around 7:10 p.m., the victims were the passengers of a Transtur bus that made the route from the city of Camagüey to Havana. The criminals jumped on the vehicle when the driver was forced to stop at the railway crossing. “They are ninjas, there were about six of them,” he says in Facebook Ridier Leyva Tamayo, one of those affected by the theft of luggage.
After seeing what was happening through the window, the passenger got off the bus but was unable to recover his belongings. “I fell behind them and they stoned me. I had to go back.” After the robbery occurred, they called a police patrol but the uniformed officers refused to go into the brush on the grounds that they could not leave their vehicle unprotected.
The incident seems to be a copy of the one that Claudia, a 23-year-old from Camagüey lived, and her boyfriend last July, when they decided to visit her family in Havana. “It was night and the whole area was very dark,” the passenger told 14ymedio. “I remember the bus stopped and I was in a window seat just above one of the luggage compartments.”
Claudia observed four individuals with their faces covered coming out of the vegetation near the roadside at the same Quesada railway crossing.
Claudia observed four individuals with their faces covered coming out of the vegetation near the roadside at the same railway crossing in Quesada, Ciego de Ávila. “They moved very quickly, it is clear that they have done that many times because in a few seconds they had opened the door and loaded with two large suitcases and a briefcase.”
“If that was months ago and it continues to happen, it is because they have not put surveillance in that area despite the complaints,” claims the Camagüeyan. Although in his case he was not among the victims who lost their belongings, he does remember that on the bus, which was also from Transtur, “there was a couple who was going to Havana because they had a flight abroad and they lost all their travel luggage.” .
According to Claudia, the bus driver told them that this was frequent and that he tried to stop for as little time as possible, but that once he had already lost several points from his driver’s license because he stopped very briefly and later on there was “a police horse who saw him and fined him”.
The woman believes that the thieves continue to operate in the same way and in the same place because “they enjoy impunity, the Police are there for something else, to make sure that the peasant does not sell his milk on the black market or that people do not earn a little money offering their products on the side of the road, but not to catch these criminals”.
“It’s robbery what there is and nobody does anything, every day is worse,” describes, for her part, Maidelyn Cruz, who recommends avoiding night trips
The discomfort due to the bad police action also runs through the comments that numerous Internet users have left under the complaint of Ridier Leyva Tamayo. “I think that due to the inaction of the Police, crime continues to increase. They do not feel real pressure. I have called a patrol for an act of robbery and they come an hour later, when everything is over,” laments Onaldo Paján.
“It’s robbery what there is and nobody does anything, every day is worse,” describes, for her part, Maidelyn Cruz, who recommends avoiding night trips because not only “you have to be an artist to avoid the number of holes it has that Central Highway” but also adds that “the ninjas began to gather strength again”.
They are called “ninjas” for stealing quickly and stealthily, and they also frequently rob trains to steal merchandise carried by freight cars or passengers’ belongings. “They have keys to open everything, no closed door is a problem for them,” warns an employee of Ferrocarriles de Cuba who has been in the sector for a quarter of a century.
“The interprovincial buses are caught fighting at the railway junctions and they watch us when we stop to change a pooch or when we are waiting for another train to pass through a crossing. We have no life, they steal cement from us as well as sugar. When I have passenger trains, people sleep with their briefcases strapped to their feet or arms.
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