A shop owner of Bath Experiment, West Coast Berbice is distressed after she woke up on Friday to discover that bandits had invaded her business place and carted off cooking gas worth $360,000.
Basmattie Gopaul, 36, told the Sunday Stabroek that she had secured the 30 bottles of gas on Thursday evening in a steel rod “cage” in front of her shop.
She was shocked when she checked around 6 am and discovered that the cage had been broken and all of the bottles were gone.
The woman said the bandits wrenched opened the padlock on her gate to enter the yard. “And dem had enough time to close the gate and press in back the padlock.”
The bandits also managed to open her minibus and remove a mat from the driver’s side. They placed the mat in front of the door to the cage “and rest the bottles on it to avoid making noise.”
Gopaul said she made a report to the nearby police station at Fort Wellington and the officers came later and took statements. They did not keep their promise to return and take fingerprints though.
According to the woman, two other shop owners from the area as well as another from Bush Lot had also recently lost their cooking gas and bottles in a similar manner.
