The suspect in the Mash day shooting of two women, including one who was pregnant, remained under guard yesterday and is expected to be charged with a number of offences including robbery under arms and discharging a loaded firearm.
Police said in a press release that the suspect was fleeing a robbery scene and discharged his firearm in the getaway bid hitting the women.
According to the release, at 12:45 pm, Naronatie, 49, and her son Rovindra Prashad, 29, were at their home at Better Hope, East Coast Demerara, when they were confronted by two men armed with handguns, who held them up and took away two cell phones and $17,500 and escaped on foot.
Prashad, the release said, pursued the two perpetrators in his car along the Better Hope Road during which the men discharged rounds, one of which struck Luchanda Beckles, 24, of South Vryheid’s Lust, ECD, to her left thigh as she was walking along the road.
Prashad continued pursuing the two men who subsequently separated. He later saw one of them along Victoria Road, Plaisance, whereupon the armed man again discharged rounds indiscriminately. One struck pregnant teacher Anesha Sanders, 32, of Victoria Road, Plaisance to her abdomen; she was standing on her verandah. Stabroek News had incorrectly stated that Sanders lives at Victoria.
The armed man then held up the driver of motor car PNN 7456, which had stopped, and took away the vehicle which he later abandoned in a canal in the Plaisance Squatting Area and fled into the canefields, the release said.
Police ranks who had responded to the report cordoned off the area and eventually arrested the suspect. A .32 Taurus pistol with one round was recovered from him.
The man has been admitted a patient under guard at the GPHC, for medical treatment to injuries he is suspected to have received during his escape bid.
“Contrary to reports carried in sections of the media today, he was not shot by the police. His accomplice managed to escape,” the release said, adding that the two injured women were taken to the Georgetown Hospital where Sanders was admitted and Beckles was treated and sent away.
Stabroek News was told that Sanders is now a patient of the High Dependency Unit where she was admitted after undergoing surgery. Her pregnancy had to be terminated to avoid life threatening complications.
