Chaos erupted at Stabroek Market square yesterday when a man shot at two men who attempted to rob him and the bullet hit a newspaper vendor.
Veronica Atherley, age 59 years of Stewartville, West Coast Demerara, was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound. She was shot in the hip at around 5.30 pm as she sat at her stand selling newspapers.
Up to press time last night the woman’s condition was listed as stable and the man who shot her was in police custody.
“I was right next to me mother when I honestly feel this thing pass me, and next thing I know me mother hollering,” Coreen King told reporters last night from inside the city constabulary at Stabroek Market.
As King related her story inside, officers were fending off an angry mob gathered outside. The crowd of mostly women called on the officers to release the man at the centre of the shooting to face them because they felt that he could have taken the woman’s life.
Reports are that the man attempted to flee the scene after realizing that he had missed his target and had injured the woman, but several persons pursued him including City Constabulary Officer Harmon, and they managed to apprehend him.
“Dis woman ain’t do nothing and he coulda kill she. Is wha does do these people when they get a gun? Is powerful they powerful suh that he could draw a gun in a busy street and shoot at people,” a woman asked. She was fuming and refused to stay calm as persons urged her to settle down.
Coreen King initially struggled to relate what happened because she was unaware of her mother’s condition at the hospital and also due to the tempers flaring outside. She recounted that her mother was sitting on a box and she was beside her selling papers.
Two men whisked pass the stand, but she did not pay them any attention and then came the feeling that someone went past her.
She said that her mother cried uncontrollably after being hit: “She was in a lot of pain, she keep crying.” She said that that she did not catch sight of the shooter or the men he had intended to hit.
But vendor Grace Johnson, who operates immediately next to Atherley recounted that she saw the two men, “dash pass me and when I look around this man standing close by with a gun aiming then this loud bam!”
She said that Atherley collapsed soon after the gun went off and when she checked her blood was everywhere. Yesterday a bloodstained area indicated where the woman had collapsed.
King told Stabroek News that her mother was a newspaper vendor at the market for close to 20 years, and that she loved her job. She was well known in the downtown market area.
Vendors were discussing the shooting yesterday with customers at Stabroek Market front where Atherley operates. Many of them spoke openly of how their lives were endangered because of the shooter’s actions while others in mitigation said that the man did not intend to shoot Atherley.
“He ain’t look at that old woman and shoot she, he miss the boys,” a woman said in the shooter’s defence.
The crowd came down on her and an argument broke out, some saying that the shooter acted carelessly but that he meant no harm to the vendor, while others said he was reckless and could have easily hit anyone in the area at the time.
