Tief (Thief in the West Indies)

I was a second semester medical student living in an apartment in St. George's, Grenada, B.W.I. I woke up and had an uneasy feeling that someone was in my bedroom. I was right-as I rolled over to my left, my eyes adjusted to the darkness; I saw the tief crouching next to me. We were eyeball to eyeball. He was moving toward my closet where I kept my wallet, but I wasn't going to let him have it, so I yelled for my two roommates, Steve and Jim. He ran off-like a gazelle. After vaulting over the railing of our 2^nd floor balcony, he hit the ground running. He had climbed a conveniently located coconut tree and gained entrance through our unlocked door. Steve was the first one he robbed. Steve was a sound sleeper, unlike me. My room was in the middle, so I was going to be next, then Jim, whose room was farthest from the door. The tief was making rounds. Steve was a philosophy major in college and said: "let him have the money-he needs it more than I do." I wasn't feeling that charitable- I was angry. Almost everyone in my class had been robbed at least once. One student's medical bag was stolen and his stethoscope and other instruments were found scattered on Grand Anse Beach. The tief was probably looking for drugs.

Twenty-seven years later, another tief, from Jamaica, who had murdered someone in that country and escaped to the US. and happened to be the ex boyfriend of my mother's caretaker, Rita. He beat her up. Rita's mistake was not filing a complaint, or telling me she was being stalked for over one month. Finally, as Rita and her new boyfriend were sitting in her car outside her apartment, he walked up to the passenger side window and shot them both in the head. The blood-stained restraining order that she had signed that day was found in Rita's purse. This tief left Rita's 12 year-old daughter motherless, and the 1 year-old son of Rita's new boyfriend fatherless. The tief had at least ten aliases, according to the police. He was captured by US Marshals and is being held on $5 million bail.

If the first tief had committed robbery in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he would have had his right hand chopped off. The second tief would have been tried and convicted in one week, then brought to a clock tower at noon on a Friday. Westerners would be invited to move to the front, so that they could watch the criminal having his head chopped off. Then, they could tell their friends and families what they had seen. I like the Saudi system of justice.