In the Streets: Lawlessness, Chaos in Capital

Torn by the invasion of American troops, the capital of Panama erupted into chaos Thursday as panic, gunfire and lawlessness swept the city.

Because the Panamanian army, which doubled as domestic police, had fallen in defeat, roving gangs of thugs--many of them loyalists of strongman Manuel A. Noriega--took to the streets, terrorizing countrymen and foreigners alike.

They fired into 100 screaming guests and employees at the Marriott Hotel, gunned down an Illinois schoolteacher returning from dinner with friends, used two other American women as shields and stole a school bus to go on a shooting and stealing spree.

As his first official act, newly installed Panamanian President Guillermo Endara closed all public and private establishments and clamped a curfew on the country.

Telephone interviews from Panama indicated that it did little good, however. American troops tried to restore order, but some became so disoriented that they had to beg native Panamanians for directions.

“There are no police,” Milenne Martin, 17, a high school student in Panama City, told The Times in a phone interview. “There is no law!”

The slain schoolteacher was identified as Gertrude Kandi Helin of Dixon, Ill., who taught in Panama City. The two women held hostage were Mary Rebhan, 24, of Hollywood, Fla., and Tara King, 25, of Dallas. Both were freed unharmed.

The school bus stolen for the shooting and robbing spree ended up abandoned. It was not known whether it had held any children when it was taken, but no Panamanian youngsters were reported hurt.

The mayhem began before dawn. While looters turned the streets of Panama City into an early Christmas bazaar, U.S. troops prepared to evacuate guests and employes from the Marriott.

As they were about to be moved from the hotel cafeteria into waiting trucks, Panamanian irregulars opened fire from a passing car, wounding at least one American soldier in the chest and stomach.

Screaming in panic, guests in the cafeteria dived for the floor. Heavily armed U.S. soldiers, their faces daubed with camouflage, shouted, “They’re coming in from the front! They’re coming in from the back! Get a gun position! Everyone stay down!”

“We returned the fire,” an American officer told Reuters news agency. “One of them was hit, and they sped off.”

Calm returned. The troops shouted orders for the civilians to leave behind all their luggage and to move quickly into a pair of airport delivery trucks. These two trucks, with armed soldiers mounted on each, drove in a convoy. Two Sherman tanks and a jeep equipped with a 15-millimeter machine gun led the way. They drove to safety in the ruins of a pirate fortress.

By the time the pre-dawn darkness had turned to morning and then to afternoon--and the busy looters had set up shop on the sidewalks, hawking everything from designer brassieres and French champagne to Gucci watches--Manuel Cupas, a lawyer in an upscale part of Panama City, reported the school bus theft and shooting spree.

He gave a tense account to The Times by telephone as the action unfolded.

“There’s no police at the moment,” he said, looking out his window. “There is a big bus full of people. . . . About 50 to 60 persons moving out toward the Mansion Dante (boutique) right at this moment. . . .

“It’s an ‘ Instituto Pedagogico ‘ (school) bus. . . . They probably stole the bus. . . . Listen . . . they are breaking in. . . . They are trying to get into the boutique. That’s a gun. . . . Who’s shooting? All of them are getting in for the merchandise. . . . There’s a car stopped with people with guns, and they’ve started firing at all those guys. . . . The bus is still there. Jesus Christ! Nobody is hurt. . . .

“They just shoot to move the people. They are running. . . . I don’t know them. I don’t recognize that car. One of the people who got the gun . . . Wait. Wait. (To his pregnant wife) Get down! Jesus, I am on the floor now! I am on the second floor, but the bullets are going. . . . (To his wife) Go over there! . . . My wife is expecting our first baby in April. . . . Are they moving away? Wait a second, I will see what I can see. They just left. Everybody left. . . .

“I hope my wife is OK. She was afraid. We have a balcony enclosed with windows facing the street. . . .

“They are robbing now at the other side of this building. It’s the Taxi store. Still shooting. . . . Do you hear this? I am on the floor again. One of the stores is called Taxi. (To his wife) What do they sell there? They sell men’s clothes. They are destroying it.”

Cupas said the first band of robbers, those who arrived in the school bus, looked like members of the Dignity Battalion, a violent paramilitary group loyal to Noriega. The second group, he said, looked like armed civilians.

Rebhan and King, the two American women taken as human shields, told their story to members of a Pentagon media pool that accompanied the U.S. troops to Panama. They said they were taken captive at the Panama City airport Tuesday night, shortly after U.S. troops arrived.

The women said they had gone to the airport to pick up Rebhan’s brother, flying in for her wedding at the end of the month.

As the American forces closed in on the terminal, the women said, 30 armed Noriega loyalists took them captive and holed up in a sweltering customs room.

“They had us in chokeholds for most of the time,” Rebhan said.

“They made us kneel down,” King added. “(They) held guns to my back and to her head.”

American troops began to arrive in force to take over the airport, but the Panamanians held them off with the women.

“For six hours they made us keep shouting, ‘Go away. We’re Americans. They’re going to kill us . . . if you come,’ ” Rebhan said.

Just before dawn, the Americans set a deadline of 6:30 a.m. for the Panamanians to surrender and told them they were surrounded and that Noriega was already dead. In fact, Noriega’s whereabouts were not known. But his loyalists fell for the bluff--and gave up.

A number of Panamanians reported attempts to organize private security teams.

Leticia Arias, 39, a lawyer who lives in a two-story home in the upper-middle-income neighborhood of La Loma near downtown Panama City, told The Times by phone that 200 families were taking turns as “watch teams” while other families slept.

Nearly all armed themselves with small-caliber weapons, including .22 pistols and hunting rifles, she said.

She said the families were terrified that members of Noriega’s Dignity Battalion would raid their neighborhood Thursday night. The families prayed for the arrival of American soldiers who could restore peace.

“I don’t know why the Americans have not come to take care of the neighborhoods,” Arias pleaded. “Tonight (roving gangs) are going to kill all of us. We all have guns. We are armed--not heavily, with .22s and .45s or hunting rifles. They are the only things we have to defend ourselves.

“There are no police in the streets, no one to take care of us. We are very afraid of what will happen to us tonight. We are waiting for American soldiers to come. We haven’t seen one.”

Arias described the day as “horrible for the businessman in downtown Panama.”

“All the people went to the streets, especially low-class people . . . and destroyed businesses, drug stores, department stores, hardware stores, everything--the whole city,” Arias said. “They have been stealing cars, which they load with refrigerators, furniture.

“In the cars are men armed with shotguns and heavy arms. All these people have had so many needs over the past two years, they feel now is the time to get what they need. They rob supermarkets because they are hungry. That is the mind of these people.

“The Dignity Battalion . . . calls the people from the street and tells them, ‘You can get whatever you want.’ The poorest people are listening to them.”

In downtown Panama City, fear was just as keen.

Celia Cabrera, who lives in a second-story apartment, said by telephone that she was afraid to leave her building. At dawn, she said, she heard planes overhead and saw soldiers surrounding a government building nearby.

“Maybe,” Cabrera said, “they thought he (Noriega) was hiding in there.

“There is a lot of vandalism,” she added. “People are breaking windows, taking everything they can. I have gone down to the first floor, but I don’t want to go outside. I see people running by, some of them shooting.”

Rodrigo Vives, a lawyer living in a fourth-floor condominium near the banking center, said he had stockpiled enough food for himself, his wife and two children to live for five days without having to venture outside his building.

Also contributing to Times reports on the situation in Panama were staff members Kristen Christopher, Nina Green, John H. Lee, Maria Newman, Catherine Sauceda and Tracy Wilkinson in Los Angeles, Lisa Romaine in New York, Thomas B. Rosenstiel in Washington and Edith Stanley in Atlanta. The story was written by Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles.