WHILE the heavens were releasing showers over most of the island yesterday, gunmen were driving fear into staff and patients at the Bellevue Hospital in Kingston.

Lambert Kelly, a security supervisor at the hospital, told The Gleaner that the bandits hit the hospital about 2:00 p.m.

The security guard said two young men, one of them armed with a handgun, held up a member of staff and took him into the emergency room where staff, students and patients were.

No older than 13

The gunmen, he said, demanded jewellery, money and cellular phones. One of them, he said, was no older than 13 years old.

"They got a cellular phone and a car key," he told The Gleaner, adding that persons were forced to scamper for cover.

It is not the first time that staff and patients at the Bellevue Hospital had been robbed. According to Hugh Porter, the hospital's chief executive officer, it has become a constant practice, aided by the absence of a perimeter fence to secure the facility.

Yesterday, he told The Gleaner that he was happy nobody was injured in the latest incident, and repeated his call for the completion of the perimeter fence to help secure persons at the psychiatric facility.