A route 32 minibus driver is now hospitalised after he was shot to his back just before midday yesterday at Flour Mill Public Road, Eccles, East Bank Demerara, by two men who posed as passengers.
Injured is Feroze Ghani, 48, of Ruby, East Bank Esse-quibo, who is currently being monitored at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) Male Surgical Ward. He is due to undergo surgery to remove a bullet which is lodged in the region of his lungs.
According to a police statement, at about 11.45 am yesterday, two men, one of whom was armed with a gun, held up Ghani, his conductor Raphael Ghani, 27, and passenger Dhanmattie Ramana, 46, of New Road, Essequibo Coast. The two perpetrators, who had joined the vehicle at Parika and requested the driver to stop at Eccles, took away a total of $21,000 and escaped but not before shooting the driver.
Raphael Ghani, who is the son of the injured man, told Stabroek News that the minibus was fully loaded with passengers who were travelling from Parika to Georgetown. He recalled that as they were in the vicinity of Eccles, a man requested to stop at the Four Mill Road.
The senior Ghani, however, stopped a corner away from road, causing the passenger to become annoyed. According to Raphael, the man subsequently demanded that the driver reverse the bus to Flour Mill road. “I ask he why he want that and when I turn around I see he had a gun in he hand,” he recounted.
“Reverse the f****** bus to Flour Mill Road,” he recalled the man saying, before a female passenger shouted out loud that the man was carrying a gun. This, Raphael said, caused his father to panic as he attempted to drive the bus. However, the gunman fired a shot at his seat and the bullet pierced it and struck him in the back.
The men then made good their escape on foot.
While the police was alerted, while Feroze, who was bleeding profusely, was picked up by his son and rushed to the GPH, where he remained a patient in a stable condition up to late yesterday afternoon.
The attack was described as a failed robbery by Raphael, who believes that the men were possibly targeting a passenger.
