Despite struggling to overpower a lone gunman, the owner of Aaron & Son Jewellery in New Amsterdam was robbed around 10:45 am yesterday of $1.7 M worth in gold jewellery.
Aaron Mohamed told Stabroek News yesterday that he received nine stitches for wounds to his head sustained during the struggle. He said he “braced him [gunman] against the wall and tried to take away the gun. I even bite him on his face and he bite me back on my hand that I was holding the gun with.”
Mohamed said the man attempted to shoot him but the gun “snapped and he hit me in my head three times really hard.”
According to the businessman, he was sitting outside the store at Main & Pope Streets and had just gone back in to do some work when he heard someone enter and slam the door.
He said when he looked back he came face-to-face with the gunman and he told him to “take whatever you want.” While pointing the gun at him the bandit picked up the jewellery from the glass case and stuffed the pieces in a bag.
But it was too much for Mohamed – whose store was being robbed for the fifth time in recent years – to watch the bandit removing the items and he decided to resist.
Before the struggle, another businessman from a nearby store saw when the “strange man” entered and locked the door and he called out to Mohamed to see if he was alright.
After getting a faint response he decided to peer into the store and Mohamed signalled to him that he was being robbed. He immediately called the police. But by the time the ranks responded the bandit had already made good his escape on foot with his booty.
According to Mohamed after the bandit fled he ran out of the store and shouted, “thief, thief!” He bled profusely from the wounds to his head and he wrapped it with his shirt before being rushed to the hospital.
And in a separate incident, around 11:30 am, 50-year-old Rampersaud Ramcharran of Mount Sinai, West Canje sustained a stab wound when a bandit attacked and robbed him of his gold band worth $70,000.
The man’s sister told this newspaper that she was at work when she received the news that her brother was stabbed. She learnt that a bandit snatched the gold band from her brother and thinking the bandit was alone, he decided to hit him with the bicycle bar.
But another bandit who was hiding nearby emerged and dealt him the stab. The man had just picked up his grandson from school and was returning home when the incident occurred.
