A cash crop farmer died last night after she was shot in the face by a bandit in an attempted robbery.
Pamela ‘Pam’ Kendall, 56, of Lot 19 #45 Village, Corentyne, was in her house at around 6:30 pm when a bandit approached her at the door and shot her in her face.
The killing will up the pressure on the Granger administration in the wake of an upsurge in crime in several parts of the country. A brazen robbery recently occurred at No. 48 Village on the Corentyne where bandits sawed a hole into a wooden wall of a house.
According to her husband, Deoram Sookchand, who was trapped in the bathroom while Pam was shot, the couple had just gotten home and he had proceeded to the bathroom which was about five feet away from where his wife was. The man told Stabroek News last night that while he was in the bathroom his wife had turned to the door to close it when he heard a blood-curdling scream from her followed by a loud “Pow” which he assumed to have been a gunshot. He said that after he heard the gunshot he “braced onto the wall and started to scream”. He later saw a hand coming towards the bathroom door but it suddenly disappeared and he heard the bandit’s footsteps running upstairs.
“It was blackout so he probably couldn’t have seen anything to take away so after about two minutes he run down back and disappear,” the man said, as he recalled the horrifying attack. When he finally decided to step outside to check on his wife he did not see her and was told by neighbours that she had gone over to her brother’s residence which is some 100 yards away from her house.
After the gunshot and screams from Kendall and Sookchand, neighbours said they couldn’t see anything as the area was pitch dark from the blackout. They said that they called the police who arrived some 15 minutes after but were unable to intercept the gunman who was noticed jumping over a fence and escaping.
“When I run over quick I see she blackout by the car and so we hustle she in to take her to the hospital,” the man said. He explained that from what he had heard, after she was shot and the bandit had rushed into the dark house, Kendall ran over to her brother’s house for assistance. While she was aware that her brother was not home at the time, she called out to her nephews and then walked to the car where she fell unconscious. They subsequently rushed her to the Skeldon Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
According to Sookchand, it wasn’t the first time that bandits had attacked them. He said that they were attacked and robbed on four other occasions with the last being in November, 2014. He recalled one of the times when they were beaten and a single gunshot was fired in the air from one of the bandits.
While the night was filled with misery and sorrow following the death of Kendall, it only left residents with more questions as one of the neighbours stated that while they were at Kendall’s residence a call came from an anonymous number and said “Y’all don’t call mi name we don’t get along” and hung up immediately.
