Home invasion in San Carlos, Panama

Report from Panama: Home invasion in San Carlos (just over an hour drive west of Panama City on the strip of highway near the beaches) the other day, a gang effort that rumor has it fits the MO of a number of other crimes in the beach communities. Do I want to talk about all the details I have heard, especially when early in the evening of the next day i saw and reported someone who seemed like he may have been sizing up the place where I am? If I had special barriers, locks, firearms, chemical weapons, guard animals, lighting, alarms, arrangements with neighbors or strategies I would not be such a fool to publish any of this. (Except that my attack cat is so vicious that his name is Grasshopper.)

Anyway, a house invasion robbery with three men entering the house and accomplices working outside and communicating by cell phones, Canadian newcomers whose defenses were woefully not there (and I am not talking about not being equipped with an assault rifle), the intruders being a guy with a .45 or 9mm pistol, a guy with a machete and a guy with a knife, a tie up and beat for more than an hour to extract information scene, then packing the couple's belongings in their car and driving off with it, abandoning it shortly thereafter. There is a possibility of inside information. There were apparently communications among the robbers with fakey nght-time bird calls just before the assault.

I would expect that these people will be caught and that most probably the leader will be a somewhat older guy who has done time in prison and the accomplices will be younger men and maybe some adolescents who see no decent and viable economic future for themselves. The guy I saw inspecting the gate here and then quickly heading off away from where there is anything when he saw that I saw him looked to be in his early 20s.

If they do not get caught that would probably say nasty things about the police.