Gunmen posing as customers cornered a businessman and his driver in the Coffee Bean Café on Church Street just before midday yesterday and relieved them of an undisclosed amount of cash, shortly after they had left a city bank.
“They just wanted the money but they didn’t know where it was”, Manager of the café Narvini Dewnath told reporters yesterday.
The ordeal which occurred around 11.35am lasted for about five minutes.
At the time, about seven customers were present in the café along with the staff members who were all forced to lie on the ground.
Dewnath explained to reporters that the two men entered the café and ordered two meals. She said, they were only alerted that there was a robbery when staff members began to shout “robbery! robbery!”
“While preparing meals, staff members at the counter started to shout robbery. I looked in the surveillance camera and was able to see two men walking around terrorising people. “Going from person to person checking and everybody was down on the ground”, Dewnath explained.
It is suspected that the bandits trailed the two victims; a businessman and his driver, from a city bank where they had visited to make a withdrawal and the cafe was not the target.
Dewnath said, “based on what I was told by one of the men (the victim) they followed them straight from the bank and they keep asking where the money is and apparently they had it in the car, so they (the victims) gave them (the gunmen) the keys for the vehicle, they collected phones from a few people and they went outside and collected the cash and escaped”.
The police were summoned and when Stabroek News arrived at the scene the business was open for business as per normal and investigators were taking statements.
The attack was caught on CCTV and up to yesterday afternoon the police were reviewing the footage in an effort to identify the perpetrators.
