A security guard was killed and another man is nursing gunshot wounds at the Georgetown Public Hospital after heavily armed bandits opened fire at a house at Wellington Park, Corentyne around 1:40 am yesterday.
Arjune Gobin, 47, of Bloomfield, Corentyne, was being taken to the scene of the shooting in a Pajero vehicle when bandits opened fire, grazing the back of his head. He was rushed to the Port Mourant Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Rajendra Persaud, 46, Chief Executive Officer of Nand Persaud & Co. Ltd., the first to be shot at by the bandits, was taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital. He was subsequently transferred to a city hospital and is in a stable
condition.
The bandits, using high-powered rifles and bent on entering the house belonging to Persaud’s sister, Vasantie ‘Sandra’ Ganesh, 43, and her husband, Surendra Ganesh, 50, used sledgehammers to pound a hole into the southern wall.
They had entered the yard by scaling the back concrete-fence and escaped through the same means. They also fired shots wildly, shattering a few glass windows but could not get through them because of the heavy grills.
A few minutes later the bandits successfully managed to enter the house
and switched on all the lights. They then used an inner stairway to get to the bottom flat and shot at the padlocks on the door to let their accomplices in.
They then proceeded to ransack the house while continuing to riddle the house with bullets. As all this was happening, Vasantie and two of her three children, Avinash, 20, and Vinaya, 14, had secured themselves in a room in the house.
Police said in a release that only $5,500 was taken from the house.
The money was in a wallet in Avinash’s
room. Ganesh had said that nothing “substantial’ was taken from the house.
He said the bandits removed a laptop computer from the house but left it on a table in the yard.
Persaud, of the nearby No. 36 Village was at the time responding to a call from his sister that the bandits were shooting and pounding their way into her house.
He got into his Toyota Mark 11 motorcar, PKK 3482 and apparently stopped when he got to the scene and the bandits opened fire on him.
He tried to escape and “ducked after the bullets started firing and mashed the accelerator hard but he could not see where he was going…,” a relative said.
Utility pole
His car ended up crashing into a utility pole, plunging into a ditch, bouncing out again and became hooked on a plough in front of a relative’s house obliquely opposite the scene.
He remained in the vehicle and shortly after, the Pajero carrying the security guard pulled up alongside it thinking it had parked there.
Immediately after, the bandits starting firing rapidly at the second vehicle.
The driver of the Pajero, a supervisor at Nand Persaud Co. Ltd. who rushed the injured Gobin to the hospital suspected
that the man died on the way.
Avinash told the media that he was rudely awakened to the loud pounding and gunshots. He opened his bedroom door to investigate and saw the bullets piercing the ceiling.
He said he got down on the ground and crawled to where his mother and sister were and they hid together. He heard the men shouting loudly as they ransacked the house.
His mother, still shaken from the ordeal, told this newspaper that “the experience was terrible.” She said shortly after calling her brother she heard a vehicle
blowing.
She then heard shots firing in the direction of the vehicle and was praying that it was not him.
She said about half hour later even though the place was quiet again they still remained in hiding.
She only emerged after her brother came with the police and knocked on the door and told her it was safe. She was even more terrified when she saw her brother covered in blood and he told her he “got hit.”
Another brother, Mohindra Persaud said he had the other vehicle as back-up and thinking that Rajendra had parked his car at the spot, the supervisor decided to park there as well when the tragedy occurred. According to him, Gobin only started working with his company on May 8.
Vasantie’s husband, Ganesh, owner of a gas station and packaging facility who was expected to leave the country at 6 am yesterday told the media that he left home around 1 pm to go to the airport.
He was in the Rising Sun, West Berbice area when he received a call from his wife that bandits were breaking into his house. He immediately turned back, abandoning his trip. When he got home the police as well as relatives, friends and neighbours were already there.
About 300
Sunil Ganesh, a relative who lives obliquely opposite said he woke up around 1:50 am and heard the loud pounding and “about 300” gunshots ringing out and called the police. The lawmen arrived about half hour later but by then the bandits had already fled.
He said he was taking Persaud to the NA Hospital when he noticed the Pajero at the Port Mourant Hospital. He stopped to investigate what the vehicle was doing there and learnt that Gobin had died.
Meanwhile at the home of Gobin, a tent was already up and many persons had gathered to sympathize with the family.
His grieving wife, Jenny said her husband was a canecutter before starting to work on her brother’s fowl farm. After the management at the fowl farm changed, her husband sought the job as a guard.
She said early yesterday morning she heard a vehicle blowing but did not look out. Shortly after, the phone rang and a relative told her that her husband was not well and that he was in the vehicle and was taken to the hospital.
The relative took her to the hospital and when she got there she saw blood and suspected that her husband was dead. She asked to see him and the nurses told her she could not.
Her fears were confirmed when she noticed his blood-covered body.
Along with his wife, the man has left to mourn his children: Amit, 24 who is married, Amrish, 22, Ambika, 20 and 11-year-old Anjalie.
