A Mon Repos East Coast Demerara butcher who was robbed twice before became a victim of armed robbery for a third time on Saturday evening when over $9M in cash and jewellery was taken by bandits.
According to a release from the police, butcher Abdool Hack was attacked and robbed by four men, two of whom were armed with handguns around 8 pm on Saturday evening.
Investigations revealed that Hack’s son Shazam was outside in a motor vehicle when he was confronted by the men who held him up and took away a cell phone and $5,000. The men took him into the yard where they held up Hack’s wife Vidiamattie and took her and her son upstairs where they then held up Abdool Hack.
The perpetrators assaulted the man about the body while demanding cash and jewellery, and $8 million along with jewellery to the value of $1.5 million was taken by the men.
Hack told Stabroek News yesterday that it was the third time since he established his business that he was robbed. He noted that in the late 1990s he was robbed of cash at his home and during the 2002 crime wave, he was attacked and sustained injuries to various parts of his body while purchasing cows for his business at Melanie Damishana.
He said on Saturday night he was upstairs when he observed a masked man walking up the stairs leading to the top floor of his house. He said he confronted the man and the two scuffled while another man attacked his daughter who was in another room within the house with her baby.
He said after struggling with the masked man, his accomplice hit him in the head with a gun as the two escaped with his wife’s apron, which she wears while selling meat at the Mon Repos market, containing $2M in cash. The sum represented the day’s sales.
His wife meantime, noted that she was sitting in a hammock when she observed two men running towards her with guns in their hands, and inbetween giving voice to several expletives, demanded cash. She said she was dragged into the house while she observed two other men holding up her son who sat in a car outside the family’s gate with his son. She said the men all appeared to be no older than 20 years of age.
The woman said the entire ordeal lasted some 10 minutes and the family criticized the police response, noting that a lone rank who wore plain clothes arrived at the scene about an hour after the incident. They said calls to the police station were also met with no sense of urgency as a relative had to answer “nuff questions” during the call.
The police were expected to return to the scene yesterday to carry out further investigations but up to 6 pm yesterday, they had not done so.
