Armored Car Stolen Steps Away from Chile’s Presidential Palace

A group of robbers stole an armored car Monday near the La Moneda presidential palace, seat of the Chilean government, and made off with close to 2.4 billion pesos (some $4.1 million), police officials said.

The head of the Carabineros militarized police, Gen. Ricardo Solar, told reporters that the Brink’s truck was stolen next to a branch office of the Banco del Estado in the capital’s downtown area, though the first reports said it was parked in front of the Central Bank.

After driving the Brink’s truck to the town of Conchali north of Santiago, the criminals cut it open at a metalworking plant, where they attacked and hit four people who were there.

“The criminals used electric pistols against people of the metalworking plant, and one of the young women who was able to escape was in a state of shock, with her hands tied and holding scissors, looking for someone to cut the rope,” a witness of the incident told Efe.

The robbery was the second of its kind this Monday in Santiago, after a holdup in the municipality of San Bernardo was perpetrated before dawn by seven individuals against a truck of the Prosegur company, from which they stole 530 million pesos (about $906,000).

The latter assault was carried out at 1:30 a.m. local time, when those in charge of the truck were loading it with money from ATM machines at a shopping mall.

In both attacks, the robbers opened the armored cars with oxygen/fuel metal cutters (Oxycut machines), police said.

Published in Latino Daily News