Three armed bandits early yesterday morning broke into a La Parfaite Harmonie home, where they brutalized a businessman, before making off with a quantity of cash and other items.
Owner of the N&S General Store Naresh Persaud, 43, of lot 546 La Parfaite Harmonie, was beaten in the presence of his wife and children, including his four-year-old daughter. Persaud received stitches for three lacerations to the head.
The robbers, who had their faces concealed and were armed with two guns and a knife, reportedly accessed the flat by cutting into the zinc of the shop adjoining the building and then prying open the grill bars. The incident, which reportedly began at around 2.am, was said to have lasted for more than an hour.
Naresh’s son Sachin Persaud, age 19, who is a final year Economics major at the University of Guyana, while recounting yesterday’s events to this newspaper, called the encounter “a nightmare”.
He related that around 2 am yesterday, he was awoken from sleep by a loud sound, which turned out to be the door to his bedroom being kicked open. Two of the perpetrators entered his room, a gun was pointed in his face and he was ordered to keep quiet.
“They pointed the gun to my head and then they walked…they ushered me to the room that they (his parents) were in and when I reached there, they pushed me down on the ground. They were like, “lie down, lie down next to he”—that’s my father right—he was in blood. My mom was sitting, her face was swollen. My sister was on the bed looking over everything,” Sachin related.
Sachin said that from the information he received about what occurred prior to him being taken into the room, the bandits had first entered his parent’s room, where they pounced on his father and began gun butting him in the head and choking him while the man was asleep.
His mother, Samantha Thakurdeen, reportedly screamed and was hit in the face. They later scotch taped her mouth shut to keep her quiet.
Sachin’s sister was not harmed in the ordeal, or tied up with the rest of her family.
“Apparently two of them were so aggressive and the other one was a bit lenient and that’s what we’re thankful for because before they didn’t collect me yet, they were hitting him, trying to shoot him…” Sachin related.
“It was life and death, I was like, this is it…I can’t do anything about it,” he said, while recalling the graphic event. “…they started hitting him and asking him, “this is all the money you have? This is all the money you have? And he’s crying and telling them, yeah uncle, yeah.”
He said they kept asking, “where all the green money deh?” and requesting to know the location of the “lotto money”. His father, he indicated, was at this time being constantly kicked, slapped and hit in the head, in a torture-attempt to get him to hand over cash.
“…That moment, I was thinking, okay, one of us, we’ll be going now…but I told them I’ll cooperate, we’ll give them whatever,” Sachin stated.
Sachin said they asked him whether he had any money in his room and he directed the bandits to the locations where he kept cash.
“The last time he called me and he was like…are you sure them ain got nothing more in this house here? Just be honest, tell me the truth and I won’t hurt you. I tell he, buddy that’s all that I have,” he related, stating that the individual had been “lenient” compared to the other bandits.
He said the man enquired as to where his iPhone was. Sachin admitted that it was a peculiar question to be asked, and later, when asked whether he felt that the attackers were known to the family, said it was not unlikely that they may be affiliated.
“He emptied out my clothes. He seh wow, you have a very nice closet and he even put on a shirt of mine and a ¾ pants of mine and they were trying out my perfume…” he revealed.
The perpetrators took with them his haversack, laptop and cellphone, colognes, a quantity of cash, his mother’s handbag, and items from the shop, including phone cards, cigarettes and bottles of oil. Sachin could not speak to the amount of cash stolen, but indicated it was not a significant amount.
Although the location is equipped with cameras, the men took the DVR from the residence.
Before leaving, they tied the victims’ hands and legs and left them on the bed, before escaping around the back of the house.
The young man related that they attempted to call 911 twice but said the number rang out. They did, however, manage to make contact with the La Grange Police Station, and ranks arrived within 15 minutes.
“What this place needs is a police outpost because robberies going on…everybody round here experiencing some sort of theft, only thing is ours was worst because they probably think we had money” he stated.
The police, in a press release yesterday, related that Superintendent Rishi Das and a team of officers visited the scene and assured the family that all efforts were being made to bring them justice.
