Meten-Meer-Zorg terror
Former sugar worker shot dead in bandit raid
Men being questioned
Neighbour’s house sprayed with bullets
By Kim Lucas
Five heavily-armed bandits opened fire on a West Coast Demerara household late Wednesday night, killing a former sugar estate worker before calmly walking away.
Forty-seven-year-old Mohamed Kayan Baksh, of 128 West Meten-Meer-Zorg, was gunned down under his house at about 11:30 pm, as he was about to use the washroom. The police yesterday said five men from the West Demerara area are being questioned. The shooting was the latest in a series of deadly bandit attacks which began after the February 23 jail-break.
Baksh’s wife, two children and two other relatives, who were upstairs at the time, were forced to scurry for cover as the gunmen riddled the house with bullets.
A nearby house, too, came under fire, after one of the neighbours reportedly looked out. That man said he had to retreat hastily and order his household, which included children, to lie flat as his home was sprayed with bullets.
Baksh’s 24-year-old son, Mohamed Wazim, popularly known in the area as ‘Wiggy’, told Stabroek News yesterday that shortly after his father went downstairs to use the washroom, he heard gunshots.
“He come downstairs to pass some water and, in the space of about a minute, we hear a gun fire… then another shot run off on the house, on the walls. I thought they just fire pon he [his father]. I never click that he get shot,” the young man said.
Wazim, who operates a small grocery and butcher shop under his parents’ house, said that at the first shots, everyone in the house panicked. Wazim said he then heard the men trying to break one of the windows to the rear of the house.
When Stabroek News arrived on the scene early yesterday morning, there were several louvre panes missing from the rear window. One of the relatives showed this newspaper a heavy plank, which the bandits reportedly used in an attempt to break into the house. The galvanised roof over the back steps and walls, too, had multiple bullet holes.
Wazim said that as the bandits began busting their way into the house, his 18-year-old sister, Shabanna, and the two other relatives rushed into his parents’ room and were being urged to hide under the bed by his mother.
“They lash and break the window with a two by four [piece of wood], trying fuh get in,” Wazim recalled. He said the neighbours had started turning on their lights and making phone calls. He surmised that that probably scared the bandits off. According to the young businessman, the masked men then abandoned their attack and walked out of the yard. As they headed up the street, towards the back, Wazim said the men pulled the masks from their face.
“I see three [bandits] from my window, but there were five… They were masked, but they take [the masks] off and I did not recognise anybody.”
Mrs Baksh, like her son, told this newspaper that her husband had gone downstairs to use the washroom, but she said that he was shot after his second trip downstairs.
According to her, when the man went downstairs the first time, he saw the bandits and hid behind some sacks of feed.
“It was about 11:30 [pm] and he [Baksh] go downstairs to use the washroom. When he see the men, he hide behind some feed bags, so the men didn’t see him…They [the bandits] start to break down the window,” Mrs Baksh recalled. She said by that time, her teenage daughter and two relatives staying with them, ran into her room and she told them to hide under the bed.
“I still sit down on the bed when he [Baksh] come back,” the woman said. According to her, “when the neighbour across the road looked out, the bandits started to fire shots at them. While firing shots at them, they still breaking the window, but they didn’t gain entry.
“After a while, the place get quiet. We thought they had gone away. It was still for quite a while, so we thought maybe he [Baksh] would go downstairs to just take a li’l peep at what going on. While there, they shot him three times in the temple… at close range. We didn’t hear anything,” the widow said tearfully.
Later, when the family went downstairs, Baksh was found dead in a pool of blood. “He [Wazim] was telling me that nothing not really wrong, that his father was shot on the shoulder. But he knew that his father died,” the woman said.
Baksh had been a rural constable, but Mrs Baksh said the Community Policing Group was no longer active. The woman said that during the attack, the residents repeatedly called the police, who were just about five minutes away from the scene of the crime.
“We are on our way. We are one our way,” the woman said imitating the response she got from the law enforcement agents. The police finally turned up one and a half hours later, Mrs Baksh said.
“We are not millionaires that robbers would want to come after. We don’t live bad with nobody… what little we have we always share,” Mrs Baksh said, choked with emotion.
The woman said her family was robbed about seven years ago, and although conscious of the current escalation in criminal activities, she never thought her family would have been attacked.
“We used to sleep with our windows open. I never had a second thought that bandits would come here…never. We are not rich people. We are very poor people,” Mrs Baksh said.
Mohamed Baksh is also survived by three sisters and five brothers.