Mother chopped at mining camp still to get justice

Jan 27, 2012 News

Simone Pillew, a 40-year-old mother of five, who was brutally chopped and robbed at a

The injured: Simone Pillew

mining camp at Konawaruk some two months ago, is still awaiting justice.
So far, she has been unable to get the Police to investigate the matter, while she struggles to make a living after the attack.
The woman told this publication that on November 27 she was sleeping in a hammock a few feet away from her boss, when three men barged into her camp with cutlasses, shining a flashlight into her face, demanding cash.
During the attack Pillew was chopped several times and her left instep was almost severed.
The woman, who worked as a cook, said she fell to the ground, after which the men began to ransack her camp.
As Pillew bled profusely, calling for help, her boss sought cover and failed to render assistance. The attackers eventually found seven ounces of raw gold, $20,000 and a pouch in which Pillew kept her jewellery.
Strangely the attackers kept demanding that she hand over ‘the $400,000’ which is the exact amount of money that some of her fellow workers knew she had in her possession.
The woman said “the only set of people who know I had this amount of money on me was them other boys who work in the camp. The same day before the attack, they tell me and the boss that they going home. They even ask me if I going out fuh Christmas and I tell them no.”
Fortunately, Pillew had placed the $400,000 in a plastic bag and buried it, a few days before the attack, since she was fearful of being robbed.
Meanwhile, the woman said that after the attackers left, she dragged herself into a clump of bushes where she slept for the remainder of the night until she was rescued by some Brazilian miners who were passing.
“The morning I hear some bikes passing so I started to scream and them men come in and pull me out and I tell them I get rob. I beg them to carry me to the spot where I bury the money and I dig it out and they carry me out to the landing.”
The woman said she was taken to the Mahdia Hospital where she was treated and sent to the police station to make a report.
However at the station, Pillew said, the ranks refused to take her report.
“They watch me like if they scorn and after I was sitting there a while they put me in a minibus and send me down to Georgetown.”
The woman was subsequently admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), where she spent four days.
“I ain’t got money left, I ain’t got nothing. I deh at a friend but nobody ain’t want to keep me with this foot because fuh I pee, people got to carry me and pull down me underwear; fuh I bathe people got to wipe off my skin,” she lamented.
What is more frustrating is the fact that the police are dragging their feet on the matter.
The woman said that she can positively identify her attackers and she has received information that persons in the area were seen wearing her jewellery, which she strongly believes was sold in the same area.