TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Kimarley Stewart still shudders when he remembers the cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his abdomen. Stewart said he had the frightening experience as he pumped fuel at a service station on Old Hope Road in St Andrew two Sundays ago.
According to Stewart, about 11:00 am three men travelling in a white motor car drove into the station and told him to fill the car’s gas tank. Stewart — who had been serving as a pump attendant there for eight months — complied, but when he tried to collect payment for the gas, he was grabbed by one of the occupants, who, along with his two cronies, brandished guns and threatened him into silence.
 According to the JGRA, service stations are reeling from losses due to employee dishonesty.
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The thugs, he said, then robbed him of his cellular phone, about $3,000 in cash, and drove off without paying for the fuel, which was valued at about $3,000.
According to Stewart, who said the ordeal lasted about five minutes, he was the only attendant serving outside at the time of the heist. Another employee and a security guard were both inside the gas station’s convenience store.
The Cross Roads Police confirmed that the robbery was reported to them and an investigation has been launched.
But even with that done, Stewart is not happy.
The owners of the service station, he said, accused him of organising the robbery, and demanded that he repay the stolen money.
“I asked my supervisor if I would have to pay for the loss and she went to talk to the manager,” he told the Jamaica Observer. “She came back to me and told me that I would have to pay back the money for what had happened.”
That, Stewart said, pushed him to visit the manager, but his employer, he alleged, confirmed the information related to him by the supervisor.
Stewart said he got angry and an argument developed between himself and the manager.
“I said ‘no, I couldn’t pay for that. How can I pay for something that I could not prevent? That does not make any sense at all,” argued Stewart. “His comments were that somebody had to pay for it, and that it was going to be me.”
“I got robbed at gunpoint. I was looking into three guns — one on my belly and two pointing on me,” he said. “And now they are going to ask me to pay back money? These people don’t care about anything but their money,” he said, citing this as his reason for taking his story to the media.
Reflecting on the robbery, he said, “All I was saying was ‘please Lord, don’t let them shoot me’. That was all that was in my mind. I was even preparing to take a gunshot.”
Stewart, who is the eldest of his mother’s four children, said one of his major concerns during the robbery was being killed and leaving his mother behind without his support.
Since last Tuesday, when the argument occurred, Stewart has not returned to work. He said the trauma of the hold-up and the accusation have been too much for him.
But when contacted by the Jamaica Observer last week, one of the owners of the family-operated service station denied Stewart’s claim that he was asked to repay the stolen money. That couldn’t be the case, the operator said, as the robbery was still being investigated.
“We have not had any arguments with him in terms of payment. We are doing our internal investigation, as well as the police are doing their own investigations,” stated the operator, who asked not to be named.
The operator noted, however, that Stewart may have breached standard service procedures, for which he can be held liable.
“When a customer comes up, you ascertain how it is that you are going to be paid and you try to collect the money up front or during the dispensation of the gas,” the owner explained.
“If it is you decide to give the gas and then collect after, then that is at your discretion. If you do not know the person, or if you have any reason to be suspicious, then you try to collect the money up front,” the owner added, questioning Stewart’s reason for not collecting payment before he began serving the men.
A second breach, the owner claimed, was that Stewart had his cellular phone on him at the time of the incident.
Employees are not allowed to have in their possession jewellery or cellular phones while working, he said.
“But we have not drawn any conclusion as to what happened,” the operator continued.
Last Thursday, Derrick Thompson, first vice-president of the Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association (JGRA) — while noting that he was not informed enough to speak about the incident — said service stations were reeling from losses due to employee dishonesty.
“We have about 300 gas stations locally, and within the network every day or every other day we suffer a robbery, and it comes in many different forms,” he said.
“One, we suffer from employees. Every day that I talk to a [JGRA] member they are losing from their employees. The second thing is that we are being held up by many different people,” he said, noting that despite the employment of security guards and bolstered efforts by the police, gas stations remain targets.
Last month, police arrested three men, seized two illegal firearms, and recovered about $2 million in stolen cash and cheques, following a heist at the Total Service Station on Spanish Town Road in Kingston.
