Robberies are reportedly occurring daily in the Golden Grove, East Bank Demerara area and on Thursday night an armed gang stormed the home of Surajdai Jaipaul and fled with $4 million in cash and jewellery.
Petty crimes are daily features in the community with many of the incidents going unreported, and for some residents the proximity of the Grove Police Station no longer offers reassurance.
Surajdai Jaipaul believes she was “set up” because the men who robbed her had details about a combination safe in her home, and they also stormed the house minutes after her husband went out.
Jaipaul, battling mixed feelings of anger and relief, told Stabroek News yesterday that the incident has left her worried and her young daughter, tramautised. She recounted that it was around 7.20 pm and she was sitting in the living room with the child, aged 6 years old, when two men appeared out of nowhere.
Jaipaul’s back door was partly opened since she was filling up a water tank with the use of an extension cord which was dangling outside. “I froze and honestly I did not know what to do at that point. What can you do when two people just appear out of nowhere with guns in your face?” the woman asked.
One of the men immediately demanded, “the safe” and started tossing things in the home while the other stood in front of Jaipaul holding a gun to her head. The men wore handkerchiefs to mask their faces, but during the robbery one of them lost his handkerchief.
Initially, Jaipaul refused to answer the gunman as he searched her home for the safe but he ended up in her bedroom where it was. She was stunned to see the man, described as fairly built, fetching the combination metal safe out of her room because it is heavy. “This safe is not something one person could just pick up and walk with, but he came out lifting this thing,” she recalled.
Minutes later the man started struggling with the safe, which contained $3.7 million in cash but he managed to lift it outside the home where two other men were waiting on motorcycles. The man with the gun trained on Jaipaul waited until his accomplice was outside to flee the home, but not before grabbing her jewellery and two cellular phones.
Jaipaul said her young daughter sat through the ordeal crying and at one point, begged the man not to shoot her mother.
When the men were out of the home Jaipaul made a dash for the back door to alert her neighbours, but was met with a gun in her face; one of them had turned back to warn her that if she said anything to anyone they would kill her.
Jaipaul, still determined, raised an alarm seconds after the man fled the yard and alerted her neighbour.
The neighbour jumped on his bicycle and tried to track the gang down to no avail, but he also ran into a mobile police patrol which searched the area. Still, there was no sign of the gang.
The police visited the home shortly after and took fingerprints, in addition to a statement from Jaipaul.
She said her husband was a short distance away and he returned home to comfort her and their daughter.
Jaipaul is a C-point vendor in the area and her common-law husband is involved in the fuel business.
She said the family has been living in the area for two years now and though there were reports of robberies they did not suffer any until Thursday night.
“I’m thankful that they didn’t harm me or my daughter but somehow I feel like they didn’t want to hurt me because she was there,” the woman added.
Stabroek News spoke to another woman in the area, two streets away from Jaipaul who suffered a break-in around Easter.
She said that her home was almost cleaned out and when she reported the matter the police asked her whether she had any idea who would have carried out the burglary. “If I had an idea they would know, how they could ask me that?” the woman asked furiously.
She said the police got nowhere with the case and after checking her home for fingerprints they reported that the prints were smudged. “People in this area don’t really put much faith in the police because they ain’t solving crimes in Grove,” she added.
