One of the three crew of the truck loaded with 275 pounds of gold bar appears to have used carsickness as an excuse to help rob the vehicle of the valuable goods it was carrying, authorities said.

AP reports that one of the guards stopped on the shoulder of a road in Wilson, North Carolina, on Sunday because of the complaint by a colleague that he was not feeling well.

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Right after the truck stopped, another cargo van drove up. The van's passengers claimed they were policemen but later carried out the heist.

The robbers ordered the three to lie on the road, tied their hands behind their backs and sent them to a nearby wooded area.

To make the heist look like a legitimate police operation, the robber even took out orange traffic cones and placed them near the parked truck where they took all the 275 pounds of gold bars worth US$4.8 million and immediately left the area.

To make his "alibi" of carsickness credible, after the driver stopped the truck for gas in Dillon, South Carolina, the crew who claimed carsickness said he started to feel bad when he smelled gas.

Subsequent inspection by a mechanic, however, found no problem with the truck, as claimed by the crew, according to Wilson County Sheriff Calvin Woodard.

But despite the suspicious action of one of the crew, the police said the three are still considered as witnesses and not as suspects.

Another suspicious thing is that the guards left the tractor-trailer without their guns, which breached company policies to never leave the truck without their weapons.

Transvalue, the owner of the truck that specializes in ferrying cash, jewelry, gems and precious metals, offered a US$50,000 reward for any information that would lead to the arrest of the robbers.

TagsGold bars, North Carolina