|
|
|
Widow
recounts deadly robbery attack
As
friends and neighbours were putting up a shed for the wake, she
recalled the horror of the daylight Sunday attack in which gunmen
cold-bloodedly killed her husband as she watched. Five
heavily armed men, clad in bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on
them, attacked the business premises at Lot 22, Better Hope South,
where they terrorised the couple in a three minute ordeal before
shooting Bassoo twice in the head at pointblank range. They
then fled in a car with a quantity of cash and jewellery. Recounting
the horrifying ordeal yesterday, Khan, 39, said she and her
44-year-old husband were at home at about 14:40 hrs. The woman, who also sustained gunshot wounds when two bullets grazed her left leg, and was beaten by the bandits, said she was in the shop seconds before the men attacked Widow
recounts deadly robbery attack
SHIREEN
Khan, nursing bullet wounds, was yesterday trying to come to grips
with the reality that her husband of 14 years, East Coast Demerara
businessman, Ralph Bassoo, was no longer alive. As
friends and neighbours were putting up a shed for the wake, she
recalled the horror of the daylight Sunday attack in which gunmen
cold-bloodedly killed her husband as she watched. Five
heavily armed men, clad in bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on
them, attacked the business premises at Lot 22, Better Hope South,
where they terrorised the couple in a three minute ordeal before
shooting Bassoo twice in the head at pointblank range. They
then fled in a car with a quantity of cash and jewellery. Recounting
the horrifying ordeal yesterday, Khan, 39, said she and her
44-year-old husband were at home at about 14:40 hrs. The
woman, who also sustained gunshot wounds when two bullets grazed her
left leg, and was beaten by the bandits, said she was in the shop
seconds before the men attacked. She
said she had noticed a dark grey car passing by shortly before but did
not pay much attention to it and went inside. "Immediately
after I heard someone knocking at the counter and when I look out
there was a man at the counter and he had a gun in his hand...he was
looking at the shop and at the front door," the visibly shaken
widow recalled. Realising
that it was a bandit, Khan said she dropped to the ground and crawled
to a window where her bedroom is situated and tried to wake her
husband who was sleeping. "By
the time I was doing that I could hear them opening the bolt on the
front (grill) door and by then two men were already in the bedroom
with guns," she said. She
said that by this time her husband was awake and the bandits accosted
them outside the bedroom. They
herded them into the shop where they started to beat them and demand
cash and jewellery and "the gun", she recounted. Khan
said the men were kicking her about the body and her husband asked
them why were they still beating her since she had already given them
all the money and jewellery. The
traumatised woman said one of the bandits told his accomplice in the
shop "to shoot the f...ing man" which he did, at point blank
range. The
bandits escaped with about $300,000 in jewellery and about $200,000 in
cash, she said. "I
really don't know what to do right now. But I will carry on the
business. I have to work, I have my son and we have to eat. It's not
fair but that's life", she said. The
businessman's stepson, Christopher, 18, was attending a wedding in
Enmore on the lower East Coast Demerara at the time of the attack. The
young man said he was informed about the tragedy by friends who had
left Better Hope to go and get him in Enmore. Christopher
said his stepfather, with whom he had lived for some 14 years,
was "a very good person...very kind, friendly and willing to
assist anyone." "He
never trouble or hurt nobody. If anyone sick or something in the area,
no matter if it's 1:00 o'clock in the morning, he is always willing to
take them to the hospital," he recalled. A
neighbour said a bullet pierced a zinc sheet on the roof of a house
about three yards away from the business place that the bandits
attacked. The
neighbour said everything happened in about three minutes. A
witness said there were five bandits - four Afro-Guyanese, including
one Rastafarian, and one Indo-Guyanese. They
were all wearing bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on them. The
Police were yesterday continuing investigations into the
robbery/killing. January 21, 2003 |
|
|
