Twenty-year-old Avinash Sewlochan of Bath New Scheme, West Berbice courageously defended his home and family on Sunday night by chasing away four bandits with a garden fork when they tried to gain entry.
He told Stabroek News that he returned home from a wedding house around 11:30 pm and was out in the yard talking to his girlfriend on the phone when he noticed the suspicious-looking youths.
“I see them in front of the house showing signs to each other and I said to myself ‘this doesn’t look nice.’ So I ran to the storeroom and collected a fork.”
He then started to bang loudly on the door for his parents to open up.
This attracted the attention of the bandits and they tried to rush in behind him. Luckily, he managed to close the door in time.
But the bandits would not retreat and proceed to break the window to gain entry. Sewlochan, a joiner at a furniture factory was also determined not to give up and started to wield the fork at them.
As he did this, one of the bandits dealt him a blow to his head with a piece of wood. They even threatened to shoot him but he did not see any gun.
Although the wound started to bleed, he continued to challenge the bandits. He decided to jump through the same window that the bandits broke and successfully managed to chase them away with the fork.
As all this was happening, his terrified parents and two younger siblings were screaming for help. The neighbours came out but the bandits had already fled.
They assisted in calling the police who arrived on the scene about “three-quarter hour” later. They combed the area but were unable to locate the bandits.
Meanwhile, persons believe that the same bandits had attacked a group of men at a rum-shop in the village around 7:30 pm on Saturday.
Reports are that the men had “just collected their pay and were taking a weekend drink” when the men beat and robbed them. The bandits were unable to enter the rum shop as it was heavily secured.
This newspaper was told that the bandits dropped $32,000 and a driver’s licence belonging to the men while escaping and the police picked the items up.
