A carjacker was caught on Monday night after he hijacked a taxi and then crashed into a parked vehicle.
According to a police press release, taxi driver Lawrence Singh was hired by a man at his Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara base to go to the East Bank of Demerara.
Singh told Stabroek News yesterday that the man who hired him paid him upfront to take him to the Houston Public Road. “When he was in the car, he de gyaffing on the phone and pretending he talking to a girl to give me courage like, you know,” he said.
Singh noted that while he was on the East Bank highway, the man told him that he wanted to stop at the Shell Gas Station at McDoom and he agreed. At McDoom the person who was in the vehicle pulled out a gun while another subsequently jumped into the vehicle armed with a gun. The two men demanded that he drive into a corner and he complied without hesitation.
“When I turn through the street, one a dem de telling me something and they had guns so I couldn’t fight back, you know. When I stop, the first one pull out the key and throw it at the partner and tell he ‘this is fa you’ and me open the car door and hustle to run away,” the man said as he recalled his desperate attempt to escape.
He said that after he tried to run away, one of the men stepped out of the car and threatened to shoot him. “After I stop, he come up to me and point to the bush and tell me ‘that is where I deserve to go’ and he start forcing me to go in the bush. But I was scared and I thought they woulda shoot me in the bush,” he further said.
Singh explained that he pleaded for his life for about five minutes until neighbours around heard the commotion and came outside. He said that residents stepped outside and started to shout at the men, which forced one of them to escape through the bushes and the other one to escape with the car. After the man escaped with the car, Singh said that he ran through a shortcut, caught a taxi, and told the driver to follow his car. He said that the driver called the police, who joined the chase that stretched until Sheriff Street. He said that man eventually crashed into a parked vehicle and was arrested by the police.
The perpetrator is still admitted at the Georgetown Hospital as the search for his accomplice continues.
