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Police have identified a main suspect who they are seeking for a brazen daylight robbery and stabbing yesterday in the heart of San Pedro town. And while initial reports said a security guard was left critical and that he had been robbed of $130,000 thousand dollars – police today told us that the guard only got a flesh wound and an official police report says that 39 thousand dollars in cash was stolen. Privately, police sources have told us that they have their doubts about that figure and are waiting for an accounting from the security company to verify it.

Here's what happened: yesterday afternoon at around 1:30, security guard Cleofosio Robert Assi, was walking from the Western Union Office in downtown San Pedro to the Belize Bank with the money in his backpack. He was going to make a routine deposit, but had no escort and no firearm. Two men attacked him, stabbed at him and wrested away the backpack with the deposit bag. They fled, but according to the San Pedro Sun, townspeople chased them, and detained the bagman at the town's Central Park. They were holding him until they realized that money – and lots of it - was in the backpack. That's when the good citizens turned into thieves themselves and started fighting over the money in the bag – and while they did that the robber sneaked away.

It got ever more cartoonish after that because in the struggle for the money, the deposit bag fell to the ground and the bystanders dashed for it. In the haste, they tore the bag and money went flying everywhere –while bystanders scooped up what they could and dashed off.

Well, police say they have gotten back some of the money – some of it from Caye Caulker – and they did this by reviewing security footage to see who the bag grabbing bystanders were.

As regards the robbery six persons have been detained for questioning – but the main suspect is believed to have already escaped from the island.

Island police say they are doing an internal and external investigation to see if past or present employees may be implicated.

Assi was transporting the money from a Western Union office, which also doubles as a collection agency for BEL and other companies. Again, police say they are still waiting for an accounting to determine whose money was stolen.