INAC director slain by lottery robbers

by Eric Jackson

At about 7:30 a.m. on March 10, Anel Rodríguez, the 48-year-old director of the National Institute of Culture (INAC) was crossing Calle 31 near Avenida Peru in Calidonia, near the Loteria headquarters. He was on his way to a hotel to thank a group of visiting Cuban actors at the Hotel San Remo. Rodríguez found himself in the middle of a shootout between a gang of at least five robbers and guards for the Transporte de Valores armored car company.

The maleantes, who approached the Loteria building's loading area under the pretense of delivering birthday balloons to an employee, were after some $70,000 in lottery proceeds that were being loaded onto the armored car. As they made their getaway with security guards in pursuit, accomplices waiting in an SUV nearby opened fire on the guards with assault rifles, killing 52-year-old Samuel Monroy, who had worked with Transporte de Valores armored for 12 years. The guards returned fire. Wounded in the exchange was Monroy's colleague Bartolo del Moral. Two of the robbery suspects, León Hernández Moreno and Mario Alguero Herrera, were also wounded in the exchange.

When Rodríguez realized what he had stepped into, he ran back across the street and attempted to take refuge behind his car, but there he was struck by an AK-47 bullet, which entered the left side of his chest, puncturing a lung, disintegrating major blood vessels, smashing and deflecting off of his right clavicle and exiting from the right side of his neck. He died on the curb, next to his car.

The robbers took off up Avenida Peru and abandoned their first getaway car (shown above) on Via España across from the Hotel Europa, where a confederate was waiting in another getaway vehicle.

The police reacted to the robbery with a series of raids in the capital city's Chilibre, Perejil, San Miguel, San Joaquin and Rio Abajo. In addition to the two robbers wounded at the scene, three more suspects, two believed to be direct participants in the robbery, were quickly arrested later in the day. At least 10 more individuals were detained for questioning and at least one more suspected direct participant in the robbery was being sought as this article was written.

There was no apparent political motive for this crime, nor any intention to harm Anel Rodríguez in particular. At this point if it's clear whether he was shot by a robber or a security guard that information has not been made public. This was just one more spectacular episode in an ongoing crime wave that's costing the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party dearly in the public opinion polls.

Rodríguez, an old friend of President Martín Torrijos, was the number two leader of the PRD's youth wing when the president was its leader. After that he had served as Vice Minister of Labor Development and Panama's ambassador in Cuba. Torrijos reacted emotionally to the death and was shown crying on television with Rodríguez's children and ex-wife.

From across the political spectrum, in the mainstream news media and from ordinary citizens and non-citizen residents, the incident prompted calls for tougher action against violent criminals.

This story was in part based on reports in other media and also on José F. Ponce's reporting at one of the crime scenes.