‘Me never experience something like this; me get a shock and if me heart na bin strong me coulda drop down’
Two masked bandits, armed with a gun and knife, terrorized and robbed a family at Lot 48 Kingston, Corriverton of almost $3M in cash, jewellery and other articles at around 4:30 am yesterday.
The bandits ransacked the house and escaped on a bicycle with $1.8M cash, almost $1M in gold and diamond jewellery, two Ipods and cellular phones.
They entered the house by removing five louvre panes from a window on the southern side while Mohamed Khan, 62, and his wife Kareeman ‘Zoreena’ Goolmohamed, 63, were relaxing in their hammocks under the house on the northern side.
The couple was waiting to perform their morning prayer and at around 4:30 when the call to prayer was sounded from the nearby mosque they got up and went into the house.
They were terrified when the men who were dressed in black clothing with hoods over their heads and pieces of black and red cloth over their faces, stuck them up and ordered them to lie on the floor.
Goolmohamed told this newspaper yesterday, “Me never experience something like this; me get a shock and if me heart na bin strong me coulda drop down. They tell we na fuh mek noise.”
The woman said her husband took a long time to get down on the floor and they hit him in his face with the gun butt. She told the bandits that she did not have any money because she and her husband were “old people.”
They responded that if she did not hand over the money they would “rape me granddaughters.” She said she was keeping the money at home to repair her fence.
They then entered a room where the couple’s grandchildren, Fareeza Tannall, 20, and seven-year-old Aleya Smith were sleeping.
Tannall told Stabroek News that she was rudely awakened by someone covering her mouth with a cloth demanding money. “I opened my eyes and saw the bandits and they told me not to make any noise because they already have my grandparents,” the woman said.
She got up and gave $25,000 that was in a drawer. They also removed a quantity of gold jewellery from her room. Not satisfied with the cash, the bandits told her, “This can’t be all; we get information that ya’ll gat more money.
They also asked Tannall about her husband who resides overseas and she told them they were separated. She said the men took away her cell phone and two Ipods that cost US$500 each.
By then her sister woke up and the bandits took them into their grandparents’ room and ordered them to hand over more cash and jewellery.
They also took off the child’s earrings and when she started to cry one of the bandits called her by name, saying “Aleeya don’t cry yuh mommy gon buy it back.”
Tannall said the men brought her and her sister back into the living room and put them to sit as they continued ransacking her grandparents’ bedroom until they found the cash and a quantity of gold jewellery.
In tears, Goolmohamed told SN that she sold “bara and crush ice and buy me jewel…” At the end of their looting the men ordered everyone to get up and took them straight to the bathroom “as if they know the house well and pushed in the door.”
About an hour later, when the family felt it was safe, they came out and informed the neighbours about their ordeal and subsequently contacted the police at the Springlands Station.
A neighbour later related that while on his way to the mosque he saw two men dressed in black riding a bicycle in the street and a dog was chasing them. (Shabna Ullah)
