Businessman narrowly escapes death during brazen robbery

Aug 16, 2016 News

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– elderly couple fearful after suffering similar fate

Police on the West Coast of Demerara are investigating two daring robberies that have left business

-oriented families not only traumatised, but contemplating the future of their income-earning endeavours.
In fact, a victim of one of the robberies, Khemraj Persaud, is currently counting his lucky stars that he is still alive to talk about the ordeal. The 49-year-old man, during an interview with this publication, revealed that one of the two armed bandits who invaded his home yesterday morning fired a bullet that missed his head by mere inches.
“I felt this thing pass me and I couldn’t believe was a bullet pass me head like that…I coulda lose my life this (yesterday) morning,” Persaud reflected.
Persaud, who operates a small supermarket called ‘Vincent’, at 100 New Road, Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara, disclosed that the business, which is situated in the bottom-flat of his two-storey home, has been in his wife’s family for a number of years.
This is not the first time that the business has been the target of bandits. But the incident yesterday, he recalled, was particularly traumatic.
“This is the third time we get robbed, but this is the first time for this year,” related Persaud.
He recounted that he opened his business place around 06:00 hours yesterday and had gone into a kitchen situated at the back of the shop to squeeze oranges and feed his bird. But what he wasn’t aware of was that someone had trailed him into the kitchen.
Persaud said that he only realised he had company when he was struck behind his head and instructed to lie on the ground. After instinctively turning around to see who had hit him, Persaud said that he complied with the intruder. “He had this small gun in he hand, and is this gun he use to hit me in my head,” said Persaud of his attacker.

Almost immediately, another gun-toting man appeared in the kitchen, Persaud said, and ordered him not to holler, after which he started to make demands for money.
“I tell them the money in the shop, and they run into the shop and grab up all the money there (in a drawer),” Persaud disclosed. But this was not before one of the unmasked men fired a shot at Persaud who was still in a lying position.
The man said that after the shot rang out and the men left to secure the money, he used another exit and ran out of his yard. From a safe location he saw the men checking their weapons and shortly after a car picked them up.
Police ranks who arrived on the scene were furnished with a description of the vehicle and its registration plate, although it is suspected that the latter might be false. Persaud said the police also removed a spent shell from his premises.
According to Persaud, the incident has left his entire family traumatised, including his wife and children. “We were thinking to expand our business, but this thing just scare me so much I thinking about putting a for sale sign,” Persaud added.

YET ANOTHER BUSINESS
And Persaud’s family was not the only one to suffer at the hands of bandits over the weekend. The night before, another business place at Lot 4, Nouvelle Flanders Village (Crane), West Coast Demerara was robbed.

The business place is operated by an elderly couple, Lennox and Verna Albert. They are both 69 years old.
Speaking to this publication yesterday, the woman said that she and her husband were about to close their shop around 20:00 hours Sunday when their premises was invaded.
She explained that her husband had just closed the gate that leads to their shop and was about to secure a shed when two young men scaled their gate and held her husband up at gunpoint.
The woman said that the men, one with a long gun and the other with a short gun, took away her husband’s licenced firearm and forced both of them (she and her husband) into their home where they ransacked all the rooms.
“They kept asking ‘Where is the gold? Where is the money?’ They said they wanted everything. These were good looking boys, but they were rough,” recounted Verna Albert. In addition to relieving them of more than $500,000 in cash, the woman said that the men also carted off colognes, male underwear, a cellular phone as well as a gold ring – the only jewellery Mrs. Albert had.
The couple is troubled about the loss of the firearm since, according to the woman, “we waited five years to get this gun licence and just like that, the firearm gone.”
According to Mrs. Albert, over the number of years she and her husband operated their business they have been robbed multiple times, and therefore her husband had applied for a firearm licence.
Police in a statement indicated that Lennox Albert was relieved of a .32 pistol with five rounds of ammunition.
The couple is hoping that with the evident threat to their livelihood that they will be given permission to obtain another firearm.

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