(Jamaica Observer) Two Wednesdays ago, Ackaisha Green was inside the ATM at Central Police Station on East Queen Street in downtown Kingston when she stumbled upon a stash of cash suspected to be in the millions of dollars. But she felt it was not hers to keep.
UPDATE: Jamaica: Honesty pays off for woman who handed over millions found at ATM
The money could have gone a long way for the mother of two who ekes out a living in inner-city James Street in Central Kingston. But she insisted that handing over the money was the right thing to do.
“Mi could a take it weh, but mi never take it weh. On my way coming out with it I saw two police officers, and mi say ‘Sir, I found a bag of money and I don’t know what to do with it’,” Green recounted to the Jamaica Observer.
A police officer assigned to Kingston Central Police Station corroborated Green’s story about returning the lost money. The officer, who asked not to be identified because she was not present at the time, told the Observer that she heard about the incident from her colleagues. She was unable to say how much money was inside the bag.
“Due to how it was stacked together it wasn’t easy to check, but it was certainly a large sum of money,” the policewoman said.
According to Green, she was with her soon-to-be two-year-old son, Joshua, inside the ATM when she noticed he was very preoccupied with a large transparent plastic with money.
“Mi swear say a paper him a play with. When mi bend down and look is a bag of money the baby bend down a play with. You know the clear bag, like comforter spread bag, one whole heap a money wrap up together,” she said.
Noting that the bag contained $5,000 and $1,000 notes, the woman said she immediately went inside the station and handed over the money to the police.
Within minutes, an armoured truck bearer, who had apparently forgotten the bag of money in the ATM, ran into the station, breathless. The undisclosed sum of money was subsequently handed over to him, police at the station said.
Last Tuesday morning when the Observer visited Green, she received a heavy tongue-lashing from her mother who described her as “the stupidest of all my children”.
“A mi she beg $200 this morning to give her son to go to school,” the mother complained, with a loud hiss of her teeth.
Green claimed that her three-month contract at the University Hospital of the West Indies, where she worked as a porter, had ended recently. “Mi have use fi di money; mi could a take the money, but it no belong to me. Right now me would a love some of it, but that was the right thing to do,” she repeated, as she got ready to visit an employment agency.
“Nuff people say me shouldn’t do it, but mi give it back,” she added.
The 24-year-old, who made it clear that she wants to pursue a house-keeping course at the HEART Trust/NTA, said she needed a skill that would allow her to sustain her family.
The Observer was unable up to press time to ascertain the name of the security agency which was carrying the money, apparently to service ATMs.
