Less than an hour after three cousins arrived from Trinidad yesterday morning they were attacked by three gunmen and robbed of more than $10 million in cash and jewellery.
As the robbery was in progress, Bibi Ally managed to lock herself in her Diamond New Housing Scheme, East Bank Demerara home and telephoned police. The minutes she spent on the phone with Diamond police, the woman said, were a waste. “The policeman that answer the phone sound like he just wake up and he keep asking me a set of stupid questions,” Ally told Stabroek News yesterday afternoon. “All I told this police was that bandits in front the house robbing my family…I didn’t tell him how many bandits there were…and he turn and ask me if is three African men…I just hang up the phone.”
Ally said she then telephoned the Grove Police Station. The officer who answered the phone there was very polite, she said, and promised to send a patrol. However, the patrol arrived more than 10 minutes later and by that time the robbers had escaped in two cars.
The woman, who is a member of the Community Policing Group, said that she is disappointed in the poor response she got from the Diamond Police Station in particular. “This is not the first time that someone has called them with a report and they have acted slow on it,” she said.
Ally explained that her daughter Tazeena Ally, her niece Zoreina Bibi Kadir and her nephew Zamal Mohammed arrived at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri some time after midnight. Taxi driver Aakash Roopnarine, according to Ally, transported the three cousins from the airport to her house in Diamond.
“The taxi de just pull up in front the house and I was out by the gate,” Ally explained, gesturing to the gate, which is approximately three yards away from the front door. “Couple minutes after they pull up there and been getting the suitcase and so out of the car, these three men just come out of nowhere and attack them.”
After she realized what was happening, Ally recounted that she ran into the house, locked the door and immediately commenced her efforts to contact police. The woman said she called the Providence Police Station after the robbers drove off and asked them to set up a road block. However, this was not done.
“I believe that if they had responded promptly to our reports,” Ally said, “then they would have been able to catch at least one set of these men.”
She further that she and her family usually did not tell anyone when her niece, Kadir, was visiting Guyana. It could have been, she opined, that the information leaked out and someone who is aware that Kadir usually travelled with jewellery may have planned the attack.
“I am not coming home anymore…”
For the last ten years, Kadir told Stabroek News, she has been based in Trinidad and Tobago with her husband.
The woman explained that she was robbed of US$8,700, TT$5,400, about $8 million worth in jewellery, her digital camera and other electronics, including her cellular phone. Kadir explained that she usually visits Guyana every three to six months but did not normally bring so many valuables with her. “I was planning to move back home so I walked with the money to pay down on a house lot and I brought my jewellery with me to put in a fix deposit box here,” Kadir said. “I am not coming home anymore after this incident. I hear people saying that TT bad but to me Guyana is worse than TT. In TT I can walk around with all my jewellery on and no one does anything to me,” she added.
The woman explained that she and her cousins had just disembarked the taxi when they were attacked by the three men. The attackers, she recalled, were wearing jackets with hoods pulled over their heads. “They put the guns to us and one of them start searching us and taking off the jewellery we had on and so and they took away me and Tazeena’s handbags…our handbags and they went with my other cousin’s [Mohamed] wallet. The money, additional jewellery which I was not wearing, our passports, my TT driver’s permit and bank cards were in there,” Kadir reported.
After her aunt [Bibi Ally] ran into the house and slammed the door, Kadir recounted, one of the attackers told his colleagues that someone had gone inside and was most likely going to call the police. The men subsequently ran to the main road, where two motor cars, which appeared to be white, were parked. They subsequently escaped in the vehicles. “One of the cars was a 212 and the other one a NZE… they looked white to us but we don’t know if is the street light made them look that way,” she said.
More than 10 minutes after the incident, Kadir further said, a patrol sent by the Grove Police Station arrived at the scene. The members of that patrol, she recounted, asked what had happened and then left. “I told the police that if they had arrived earlier they may have been able to chase the robbers but one of them told me that the men had guns and that was very dangerous to do…I had to turn and tell him that all of that is what he agreed to do when he took the job,” Kadir stated.
Kadir explained that her husband is a goldsmith and would normally custom-make jewellery for her or if he saw any “strange” patterns in stores he would purchase them for her. “It doesn’t have to be a special occasion for him to buy me jewellery. He likes to buy me things with odd patterns so I would know my jewellery anywhere if I saw them,” she said.
The woman further said that she has been advised that in cases where robbers steal identification and other such documents, they usually disposed of them. Kadir is calling on anyone who may discover the three passports belonging to her and her two cousins to submit them to the nearest police station.
No street lights
The area in front of Bibi Ally’s home where the robbery occurred, Tazeena Ally said, is dark. She explained that the housing scheme was not equipped with street lights and said that there was great need for it. “If you look through this street, you will notice that there are some lights on a few of the electricity posts,” Tazeena explained. “Those are lights which residents pooled money to buy. The light in front of our house is damaged.”
The woman said that if the street was adequately lit then she doubts the attackers would have done what they did at the residential location.
Like her mother and cousin, Tazeena decried the poor response from police. She said that after the mobile patrol left, police from Diamond did not come to their house until 4am yesterday morning. The incident, she explained, occurred at about 2.30am. “When we went to the station they didn’t even take a proper report from us and they didn’t take statements either,” she said.
Meanwhile, she further noted that a large business place located on the access road was equipped with security cameras. One of the cameras, Tazeena said, is trained on the access road and would have recorded the two vehicles which the robbers drove by in. “We told the police about this possibility but they didn’t make any effort to go and approach the business place to review the tape… at least they may be able to get a licence plate number from it…but they don’t seem to want to do what they are supposed to be doing,” Tazeena said.
