By Subhana Shiwmangal
A 22-year-old Guyana Defence Force soldier is in critical condition at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) after he was shot by one of three masked men who invaded his Mon Repos residence early Monday morning while he was drinking with a relative and neighbour.
Private Azim Khan of 534 Block 8, Mon Repos, East Coast of Demerara is in the intensive care unit of the GPH after being shot twice. The first bullet entered his chest and exited his back, while the second bullet grazed his back. According to relatives, he was robbed of his cellular phone, gold chain and cash.
His sister-in law, Tasha Alli, who was asleep in one of the rooms with her husband and two children when the incident occurred, related to Stabroek News yesterday that sometime after midnight, she was awakened by a noise in the house. She woke her husband for him to investigate and it was then they heard two gunshots go off inside the house.
“I heard this noise that sound like everything in the house was falling down. I woke my husband and told him like fighting passing outside. From the time we could have open the room door and run out to see what happened, we heard the gunshot twice. When we came out the person already run through this door [front door]. Azim was normal, he didn’t know he got shot. He was just normal until I took him at the hospital then he noticed he got shot.”
She added that earlier on Sunday, she and her husband left Khan, his father, and her neighbour drinking at the back where the kitchen is located, and went to bed. “He was enjoying himself because Azim is a soldier and he doesn’t always come out of the GDF certain times, so he was enjoying himself a little and the music was playing.”
She said she doesn’t know how the bandits gained access to the house because she would normally lock the front door when relatives are drinking at the back. She speculated that one of the persons who was drinking probably opened the front door and forget to lock it.
Alli recounted that she was told by the father and neighbour that that three masked men came in through the front door and one of the bandits confronted him. “Instead of Azim scream, he fight back with the men, so they didn’t get to take anything from the home. But the $90,000 he had on him that his father gave him in order to do their fence, his gold chain and his cellular phone were missing.”
At the hospital, she was told by the doctor that the bullet entered the left side of his chest and exited his lower back. His spleen was damaged and had to be removed, while the bullet brushed his heart, and damaged his lungs and large intestine resulting in internal bleeding.
The sister-in-law related that the police were summoned to the scene of the shooting and found empty casings and a slipper that the bandit left behind. Persons in the area were questioned and investigators managed to obtain CCTV footage which is currently being reviewed.
“This is really sad because to know all these years we living here and nothing like this never happened. This is the first time something like this happened. I just pray that he comes home and everything is good.” She described him as a hero who saved her life, and that of her husband, her two children, and another brother’s two children who were playing in another room when the incident occurred.
