A mother of three is calling on the police to find the gunmen who carjacked her outside a city bank on Thursday afternoon and after having her drive around for hours abandoned her and the vehicle on a dam at La Grange, West Bank Demerara.
What has left her in shock is the police’s approach to her report after checks of the cameras at the Demerara Harbour Bridge reportedly did not show her vehicle crossing the bridge, although she had evidence that a bridge toll was paid that day.
Efforts to contact the police for a comment on the matter were futile.
When Stabroek News spoke to the distraught woman, who is a final-year law student at the University of Guyana, she asked that her name not be published.
She recalled that around 1.30 pm she visited a Water Street bank and after dropping a letter inside she returned to her Toyota Spacio. She said that she spend a maximum of five minutes inside the bank.
No sooner had she gotten back behind the wheel than a man with “plaited hair” who was wearing a floppy hat opened the back passenger door and entered the back seat. Before she could react, she was slapped and the man brandished a gun.
Before she knew it, a second person entered the back seat through the other door. A demand was made for her to hand over her handbag which she did. The entire bag, she said, was emptied.
The woman told Stabroek News that both men were fluent in a foreign language, which she suspected was Dutch, leading her to conclude that they came from neighbouring Suriname. She said the duo demanded that she drive to the East Coast. At one point she told them that she did not think she had enough gas. “Shut yuh f…ing mouth and just drive till de gas done,” she recalled one of the men saying.
She said she complied with their wishes and after driving some distance was made to enter a village she was not familiar with. A third man, who was standing on the street with a haversack, was picked up. She said he too got into the backseat. The woman said that based on what she overheard; the bag contained a number of guns.
She said she attempted to look into her rear view mirror to see the faces of her captors but was caught.
She was made to drive back to the city. She said she ended up on Mandela Avenue and while waiting in line she spotted a policeman on a motorcycle. The woman said she swerved out of her lane and ran the light with the hope of catching the policeman’s attention but this did not work.
Later, while in an area between Agricola and Eccles, the man who was picked up on the East Coast jumped out of the car, which was moving slowly as a result of the traffic build up. He had the haversack he had entered the vehicle with.
She said she was instructed to drive further up the East Bank Demerara and then, before she got to the Providence Police Station she was told to turn around and go across the bridge.
At the bridge she said she told the men that she had no money to pay the toll. “One of them threw a $1,000 at me,” she recalled adding that while paying the toll, she tried to catch the attention of the clerk. During her entire ordeal she was held at gunpoint.
She said she collected the toll receipt and change and kept it. Once across the bridge, the woman added, the men instructed her to turn left. She did so and was directed down a lonely dam with no houses in sight.
When she was almost at the end of the dam, she was ordered to stop. At that point she feared she was going to be killed and began begging for her life. “I told them that I was a single mother with three children…,” she said
.
One of the men asked to see her driver’s license and after taking a glance warned her that if they saw a sketch of their faces anywhere, they knew where she lived. She said she was then instructed to put her head on the steering wheel and count to 100. She said she was sobbing all the time and was unable to count but when she raised her head about ten minutes later no one was there.
The woman explained that she had a cell phone but it was on vibrate throughout the ordeal. She then used it to call her fiancé.
At La Grange Police Station, she said, ranks were arguing about who should take her report. She said that at one point there were claims that the incident occurred out of the station’s jurisdiction.
She said that later she and ranks went to Harbour Bridge and viewed the footage from the cameras there. The woman said her ticket showed that she crossed the bridge at 2.55 pm but when the footage from that time was reviewed, there was no sign of her car.
The woman said she returned to the station to have a statement taken, but the rank listened to what transpired without making any notes. She had to recount her ordeal a second time so that he could write it.
Asked what could have sparked the incident, the woman said she was at a loss. “I can’t say what the motive was. I don’t know if they needed to transport the guns….”
She urged women drivers to be more security conscious and lock car doors as soon as they enter their vehicle.
According to her, a woman she knows went through a similar ordeal moments after she had collected money from the bank.
She said that she is still overcome with fear and has been unable to sleep.
