A rice farmer was grazed by a bullet when he was attacked by bandits and robbed of $2.5 million yesterday.
Fyuse Hossein, 63, of Good Hope, East Coast Demerara, is currently hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital after the attack, in which he was also beaten.
He had had just parked his vehicle at Water Street, Georgetown, yesterday afternoon, when he was confronted by two men, one of whom was armed with a firearm.
The bandits demanded Hossein’s bag, which contained $2.5 million in cash, but he resisted and was shot to his head. The men took the bag and escaped on a motorcycle, the police said in a press release.
When Stabroek News visited the scene of the robbery, there was still fresh blood on the roadway.
Omeela Hossein, the man’s wife, said they had just withdrawn money from Scotiabank and went to pay their phone bill. After the car was parked, Hossein said, her husband was exiting with the bag when the men attacked him.
She said one of the men gun-butted her husband and fired a bullet which grazed the side of his head. Hossein said it was not the first time that her husband was robbed.
While the robbery was transpiring, Hossein said, she was screaming and waving at a female police officer who sat at the window of a nearby police outpost, but no help was rendered.
When Stabroek News visited the mobile outpost, the officer was belligerent. She claimed that she was not at the window and no one waved to her. The woman said she was at the door having a conversation with a senior police officer and could not have offered any assistance because she works alone at the outpost.
The officer said she called the Brickdam Police Station Operations Department and reported the robbery.
