An Albion, Corentyne family was attacked and robbed on Wednesday night by a gang of three who escaped with over $500,000 in cash and jewellery.
Parbattie Bickram, 34, and her mother Ramkhali Rampat, 71, who is visiting from abroad, were chopped by the men who invaded their Lot 54 Doctor Bush, Albion home around 20:00 hrs armed with a shotgun and at least one cutlass and demanded cash and jewellery.
Bickram called ‘Paro’ was dealt two chops to her right shoulder and Rampat sustained a deep wound on her hand along with minor chops on the palms of her hands.
During the 15-minute ordeal, the masked bandits ransacked the home and also fired shots.
Bickram said she and her mother along with her two daughters were downstairs relaxing. “I was sitting in the hammock and my mother was on the bed lying down. She had just taken her
medication and my daughters were on their computer that they had received yesterday [Wednesday]. I asked [my] mother if she is not ready to go upstairs and she said just now,” Bickram said.
Not long after, she said, she heard “‘Yo! Yo! Don’t move!’ When I turn around and got up from the hammock one of the [bandits] chopped me on my hand. I looked around and saw two other men one was looking out and the other had a gun to my daughter’s head.”
The devastated woman added that the one close to her demanded money and fired a chop and broadsided her mother with his cutlass. The bandit took off a pair of bangles worth over $250,000 and a hand band worth over $50,000 which her mother was wearing. Trying to save herself from the brutal incident, the elderly woman then rolled off the bed and under it.
Meanwhile, the gun-toting bandit, cranked the gun and called out for cash Bickram said. After noticing that her 13-year-old daughter, Priya, was being held at gun point, Bickram said, she sent the girl to the upper flat to get the cash. However, after a few minutes passed and the teenager did not return, the bandit told Bickram that he would chop her in her head. “And I turn and tell him `ow babes don’t do me that come let us go for the money’ and I took him by his hand and carry him upstairs,” she said. As they made their way upstairs her daughter threw down an envelope containing US$1,200 and $35,000 and they told the bandit that was all the cash they had. However, the bandit was unsatisfied and told the family there was more money in the house. The bandit then made a run from the steps to the living room and demanded more cash. At the same time, the mother and daughter ran to the back room and bolted the door. The bandit returned and started to “kick the door down and I told him to check the middle room which had a bag with some money,” Bickram said.
She said that not long after she heard the wardrobe door in the front room shatter and the bandits began ransacking it.
Soon after, a motorcycle was seen approaching and the men, believing it was police, escaped. “They jumped the gates and run away. I waited a while in the room and then I heard my small daughter calling for us and she said they gone. I had forgotten about her and when I asked where she went she said she was in the duck pen at the back hiding. After that I came out and run downstairs and tried to help my mother,” Bickram recalled.
She raised an alarm and neighbours came out and took her and her mother to the hospital. The police were called and responded within five minutes, according to residents.
Rampat remains a patient at the New Amsterdam Hospital.
Bickram described the bandits as young men with small body frames. They were masked and two of them were dressed in all-over black, while the third wore black pants and a red long sleeved shirt.
The men entered the yard by jumping over the rear fence.
Additionally, the men fired three shots. While the pellets injured no one, they penetrated the roof of the house leaving holes.
Stabroek News understands that Rampat and her husband, Chetram had arrived in Guyana a week ago for a vacation.
Police are investigating.
