Two armed bandits who posed as customers held the owners of a restaurant in New Amsterdam at gunpoint on Tuesday night and robbed them of gold jewellery worth almost $200,000 and a small amount of cash.
Geeta La Rose, owner of the restaurant located at Lot 41 Stanleytown, told Stabroek News that in the ordeal which lasted for 10 minutes the bandits beat her son, Devon Noel, 25 and his friend, Linden Griffith with gun butts in their faces.
She said the two were sitting in front of the shop at around 11 pm when the “neatly dressed” bandits entered and ordered food. She said her son told the men that the food was finished and they then asked for pastries and local drink.
The woman said that as her son was entering the house to get to the shop the men drew their guns at him and ordered him to hand over everything.
She said the bandits ordered Noel and Griffith to lie face down on the floor and one kept watch over them while the other went into the upper flat of the building and proceeded to rob her.
According to La Rose she heard someone coming up the stairs and thinking that it was her son, she kept calling for him but did not get any response. She said the next thing she knew was that someone was lifting up her mosquito net and was pointing a gun at her and demanding “the money for the house.”
She said that she recently purchased the house and the bandits must have thought that she would have accumulated the installments to pay for it. She responded that she did not have the “house money but ah gat money.”
The woman said that she pointed to where the money was under a mattress and the bandit lifted a part of the mattress up to retrieve it. At this stage her 14-year-old daughter, Kimberley woke up and asked the bandit “what you doing in here?”
She said that the girl removed a pair of earrings she was wearing and handed it to the bandit and told him “that is all we have.” But he was still not satisfied and after relieving La Rose of her chain with diamond pendants and her bangle and accusing her of trying “to hide the money,” he returned downstairs.
Thinking that the nightmare was over, the woman said the accomplice then came up and demanded money as well. He ordered her to lie face down and threatened to “kill my daughter if I didn’t lie down.
In a brave manner, Kimberly then asked the bandit “you don’t have anything better to do with your life? That is the way you treat humans? But the bandits did not respond. He and his colleague later fled in a waiting taxi.
But before that, she said, her son heard one of the bandits telling someone on the phone that he “cannot handle this wuk, y’all have to come and do it y’all self…”
