Adventure Travel El Salvador: Reporting Live…
January 30, 2000
…from the streets of San Salvador. Today I witnessed an armed robbery in front of the house where I am staying. I was tapping away on the computer in an upstairs bedroom overlooking the street when I heard some commotion outside.
I ignored it for a moment. The intensity escalated and drew me to the window to see a man in a black ski mask and military garb jamming a machine gun in the face of a man in a car. The man and his wife had just come from the bank carrying over $5000 in cash. The bad guys had followed them and stopped their car directly under my window.
There were at least three robbers in a black car with black tinted windows. The two I saw, similarly dressed and armed, carried out their operation with military precision. Wham,Bam, Thank You Ma’am! No amateurs here. Zoom, and they were gone! No one was hurt and no shots were fired. Curiously, there was an armed security guard less than a half a block away who could easily see the whole incident. He was actually helpless in the face of the heavily armed bandits and his intervention would have certainly made matters much worse for all those concerned.
Prior to this incident, I had written a draft of an entry concerning all of the armed security guards and the barbed wire that abound in San Salvador. Most businesses, including all gas stations and convience stores have their own guard armed with a weapon that is a cross between a pistol and a sawed-off shotgun, with enough ammo for another civil war! My hosts had been constantly discouraging me from driving anywhere in town by myself. “Relax!”, I tried to tell them, “I’m a big boy! This is not my first time in a big city!” They were insistent. Now I appreciate why. Thank you.
