A stray bullet shot by a fleeing bandit hit a woman in the abdomen yesterday, putting an end to her first trimester pregnancy as doctors at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) were forced to abort the baby to avoid life-threatening complications.
Anisha Sanders, 32, of Lot 46 Victoria, East Coast Demerara was shot while standing on her verandah after she raised an alarm about a car being hijacked a few houses away.
Sanders was shot to the area of her left abdomen while the bandit was attempting to escape furious residents after being caught in what was described as a carjacking. 5
Another young woman, 24-year-old Lashunda Beckles was shot in the leg.
According to Anisha’s husband, Joseph Sanders, his wife was on the verandah when she noticed the perpetrator in the act and alerted them.
“When I went out all she said to me was I get hit… The car was a few houses away and the guy was heading out.
He go fuh hijack de car and a stray bullet hit her,” the man related as he waited at the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital yesterday while his wife was taken into the theatre for emergency surgery.
“Another woman get shot too… She was heading to the mash with her boyfriend when it happened,” he said. He said he was not familiar with that couple.
Sanders said it was subsequently related to him that as the young couple was walking along the road, they saw “this man running and some men in a car chasing and is like when they scare off the guy that he fire the shots,” Sanders explained.
Beckles was reportedly treated at the GPH and sent away.
Sanders said his wife was about two to three months pregnant and was required to have an abortion to avoid complications which would have posed a risk to her health.
Meanwhile, the 20-year-old alleged bandit who said he lived at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara, was taken to the hospital a short later by police to seek medical attention for the injury he suffered to his knee while fleeing the scene.
