Minutes after a Goedverwagting, East Coast Demerara man entered his yard on Thursday night he was attacked by two robbers and shot to the abdomen.
Paul Samaroo, 32, has since been admitted to a private city hospital. He was, up to late yesterday afternoon a patient of the institution’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where he was recovering after surgery. As a result of the attack, he lost a kidney.
Police are currently investigating the incident as an armed robbery, a senior official said. The incident, the official added, was well planned.
In a press release issued yesterday afternoon, police reported that the attack occurred at about 9.25pm on Thursday. Samaroo, police said, was attacked and robbed by two men, during which he was shot and injured. Samaroo was confronted by the two men, one of whom was armed with a handgun. The armed man shot him and then took away his personal jewellery and escaped, according to police.
When this newspaper visited the city hospital yesterday afternoon, Samaroo’s mother, Bibi Khan, was in the ICU waiting area in tears. The woman said that her son was in a serious condition. His father, Neville Samaroo, explained that his son was shot once; the bullet went through his hand, entered his abdomen and was lodged in a kidney. Following surgery, Neville explained, the bullet was removed from his son’s body but he lost the damaged kidney. “His liver was bruised as well so they have him sedated right now. He is in a serious way but I think he is stable,” Neville said.
A “boy” who would normally do errands for them, Neville said, was the one who shouted out to relatives that Samaroo had been shot. It was the same young man who had also shouted to Samaroo that two “strange men” were approaching him.
The two robbers, residents have since told Neville and his family, were seen under a tree along the Goedverwagting Access Road hours before the incident. “Our house a little way back from the access road so after the men attack my son they run out the same way they come in,” the man said.
Paul, according to his father, has been coming home from work around 9pm or thereafter due to the busy holiday season. “It would not have been hard for anyone to trace his movements,” he said.
