A bandit shot and killed a minibus driver for his gold chain on Monday afternoon at Grove Public Road, East Bank Deme-rara, then managed to escape after a soldier in the area tried to apprehend him.
Beepat Taijram, 28, of Lot 55 Albouys Street, Albouystown, was attack-ed in his minibus by two bandits who had boarded as passengers.
The attack occurred around 2:30pm aboard the Route 42 bus.
Stabroek News was told that one of the bandits shot Taijram in the back and the wounded man then tried to escape. By this time, the other bandit reportedly scampered off.
“All ya here, is plie, plie, plie,” one eyewitness said. “I was in the hammock sleeping when I heard the shots start fire and the conductor run into the church yard,” the man recounted.
He said the bus had stopped at Campbell Street and the gunshots woke him. The man saw Taijram shot dead in front of the Grove Full Gospel Fellowship Church.
Taijram, according to the witness, had already been shot when he disembarked the bus and he was trying to escape but the bandit shadowed him. At the same time, he added, the bandit was oblivious to a soldier’s vehicle that was parked behind the bus. The man said the soldier fired several shots at the gunman but didn’t hit him.
He said the bandit hovered over the injured Taijram, snatched his gold chain and sprayed his body with bullets before he dashed through Campbell Street.
He said the soldier ran behind the bandit but he was unable to apprehend him. The soldier then moved back to his car and drove through the street. But the bandit was long gone. “A bus man come and collect the man, fi carry he to the hospital, but the man de done dead,” the man said. “Is teenagers them man look like,” he added, referring to the two bandits.
Another eyewitness said the minibus driver was shot to the right part of his abdomen. The man said the bandit snatched the driver’s chain after he collapsed on the road. The driver then put his hand up in the air begging the bandit not to kill him. But he was shot several times. “The man had on a fat gold chain,” he said. “If you see people start run, when bullets start fire,” he added.
Later in the night, a carload of policemen went to scour the area but they did not find the bandit.
Another witness said it is hoped that the church’s security cameras may be able to identify the bandit.
Praymwattie Taijram, the dead man’s grieving mother, said, “I don’t think any mother could have a loving son like that.” She said the bandit should have just taken whatever he wanted and not killed her son.
Taijram’s wife, Romene Ankase, said someone used her husband’s phone to call her. She said the person told her that he was in an accident. The woman learned of her husband’s fate when she reached the East Bank Demerara Hospital.
She remembered him as a good and loving husband. The two shared a four-year-old son.
Taijram, who started operating the bus two years ago, was a former policeman.
