tackled two robbers, both apparently armed and one armed with a machete.

However he has had to undergo emergency surgery for stab wounds following the attack in his grocery store on Monday evening.

This kind of armed attack on innocent people who are going about their business has to stop. Mr. Aguiar is known as a hard working man who, along with his brothers and other family, has built a good quality business from a poorly run store. He is efficient and helpful with his customers and maintains a very good grocery operation. He must now, of course, be given one of Bermuda's bravery awards.

We understand the emotion and anger which would cause a hard working grocery owner to fight off armed attackers but we doubt the wisdom of taking on two men, one with a machete. It is not the kind of action which anyone would recommend in the face of armed robbers. Protecting a person from harm would be very different but preventing a cash robbery is not worth getting hurt. We can only hope that other stores advise their staff to hand over the cash rather than risk injury. We are thankful that the robbers did not have a gun or Bermuda might have another horrible supermarket killing similar to those at Hayward's in Warwick and the Shopping Centre on Victoria Street.

Let us hasten to say that there are clearly elements to this latest attempted robbery which have not been made public and we are writing only from the perspective of what is already known.

Bermuda must make it clear that this kind of armed lawlessness will not be tolerated. Bermudians must not allow their Country to degenerate into an armed camp where criminals control the streets and the rest of us are locked inside our homes. Attacks of this nature are becoming far too frequent and must be stopped before it is too late. To that end the public should cooperate in any way it can.

This kind of attack is shown on television every day to the point where those of criminal intent are in fact given quite specific lessons on how to commit such a crime. Bermuda must make it very clear that those lessons may apply elsewhere but they do not apply here.

In the last few years the Police Service has had remarkable success in solving armed robberies. That success seems to stem from the targeting system instituted by former Commissioner Colin Coxall whereby large numbers of Police were quickly reassigned temporarily to a case to flood an investigation while the trail was still hot. The system paid well in a number of cases. We can only hope that it will have the same results in the Harrington Hundreds case.