Armed bandits escaped with a grey Toyota Premio motorcar, PNN 4184 worth $3M after robbing an Ithaca, West Bank Berbice contractor of $4M in cash and jewellery around 1:30 am yesterday.
Jermaine Benjamin, 32, told this newspaper that two of the bandits, one of whom was masked lit a fire in front of his bedroom door to get him to open up. Three of their accomplices kept watch in the yard.
Police have arrested some persons. Benjamin said one of the men held had taken three persons from Georgetown to his house on Sunday to hire a generator to use at the Soiree at Hopetown.
He said the men spent a long time in his yard looking around as they waited on him. He later went to the Soiree to “start up the generator.” At the time he was wearing a big gold chain weighing 120 pennyweights.
They ransacked the room and removed the jewellery worth $2M on the dresser and $2M in cash from a drawer.
The bandits also stole a laptop computer he got as a gift two weeks ago and his cellular phone. He said he co-operated with them because they threatened to shoot him.
He recalled too that when the bandits entered his room they told him “don’t make noise; we have three other men in the yard.”
The bandits also demanded the keys
to the car as well as to a RAV 4 jeep that they had to reverse to get the car out. They eventually found the keys in a bag on the table. Two other vehicles were also in the yard and the bandits threw the other keys under them.
After driving out the jeep they left the lights on and the door ajar as they sped down the street in a dark-coloured car that they came with and the Premio.
Recounting the ordeal, Benjamin, a contractor with the Regional Democratic Council, Region 5, said he was fast asleep and was awakened to
the sound of knocking on his room door.
He said he listened again for another knock but smelt something burning outside. The men had lit a fire using the door mat and bath towels to arouse him. Before he could open the door to investigate, the bandits found the key to the bedroom and entered. They held him at gunpoint and ordered him to lie face-down on the floor.
They then bound him with pieces of his 50-ft telephone cord, blindfolded him with duct tape they found in the house and ripped apart a pillowcase to gag him.
Benjamin was alone in the house as his wife and six-year-old were spending the night with relatives.
He surmised that the men were in the house for a long time because they had time to remove a curtain from one of the bedrooms doors and hang it by the kitchen window.
That was to prevent the neighbours from peering into the house. They also drank sodas and left the empty bottles behind.
He said the bandits gained entry to his house by breaking a door leading to the inner stairway. They then escaped with their loot through the steel door in the upper flat.
A neighbour later related that she heard a vehicle approaching and she looked out thinking it was her husband. She said the car stopped in front of Benjamin’s house and blew once.
The woman said the park light was also left on on the vehicle and she did not think anything was amiss.
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