Taxi driver shot at East La Penitence

A Government Technical Institute student and part-time taxi driver was  wounded to his right arm yesterday morning when he was confronted in front of his home by two gunmen who escaped with an unknown amount of cash.

Edward ‘Junior’ Freeman, 24, of Lot 173 Sideline Dam, Middle Road, East La Penitence, had just arrived home around 2 am when the incident occurred. Freeman has been admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Police in a press statement said that only one of the perpetrators was armed, however, the family said that it was both. The police stated that the armed man discharged a round which shattered the glass of the driver’s side door and which subsequently hit Freeman to his right shoulder.

Edward  Freeman

Stabroek News contacted the injured man’s sister, Leslyn Rogers, who said that it was around 1:45 am when her brother finished working and arrived home. She said that he had already opened the gate and returned to the car to drive it into the yard when he was confronted by the bandits. She said a single shot was fired.

“My sister and mother hear this thing but they thought something fall down but then I hear they hollering ‘Junior get shoot, Junior get shoot’ and I jump up,” she recalled.

Rogers said they found the young man bracing against the wall. “He call my mother and said ‘them boys just shoot me, carry me to the hospital’,” she added. According to the woman, the bullet remains lodged close to Freeman’s spine and doctors have indicated that they cannot operate as yet.

She said that Freeman has related to them that following the robbery, the men made off on a bicycle. “He said like they were waiting for him under this tree on a bicycle,” Rogers told this newspaper.