Bocas robbery attempt gets “007” rating in Canada

COINCIDING with this week’s  black tie and champagne, reception for the Panama premier of Spectre, the latest James Bond movie,  an incident in Bocas Del Toro got the Bond treatment  from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on the weekend.

The CBC, account including perhaps, some  embelishments reads: VICTORIA RESIDENT John Oughtred, never thought his two-week vacation to Panama would turn into something out of a James Bond movie.

On Tuesday night, while he and his girlfriend were enjoying their time in a rented vacation home in Bocas del Toro, a burglar broke in, a fight broke out, and Oughtred threw the intruder off the balcony.

“We were drinking some wine and then at about three o’clock in the morning my girlfriend went downstairs, and I was shortly behind her.”

“I heard her scream really loud. She threw her glass and I came downstairs to find a guy fully decked out in camo, with a mask across his face, pointing a loaded gun,” Oughtred said.

“I basically just blew past her, I swatted the gun and I just kind of grabbed him with my two hands up around the chest area and drove him back about 15 feet to the edge of the balcony.”

Oughtred said he thought the balcony would break, and he could throw the intruder off that way. But that didn’t happen.

“I just kinda turned, and I kinda reached down and lifted him up and basically torpedoed him off the corner of the balcony. It was about 25 feet up, and he landed on his head.”

Oughtred said the police came 10 minutes later, and arrested the suspect, who survived in a “very, very cut up and beat up” state after his fall. He said police told him the intruder had been a suspect in several other robberies of tourists. Bocas del Toro police officer Luis Quintero confirmed Oughtred’s account to CBC.

Oughtred and his girlfriend went back to Panama City after the incident, and are now trying to get home to Victoria. He says he blew out an already injured knee in the fight.

Oughtred says he and his girlfriend hope to travel again soon.

“I think she’s more adventurous than I am, and this hasn’t detracted us from going anywhere or doing anything in the future.”