Bandits went on a rampage on Tuesday night, breaking into Hoosain’s Halaal Restaurant, two jewellery workshops and a cell phone repair shop, located at Main & Pitt streets, New Amsterdam and carting off articles worth almost $500,000. When this newspaper visited yesterday the victims were lamenting their loss. The bandits stole a bicycle, digital camera, pressure pot, five gallons of cooking oil and 18 cans of milk among other items amounting to $241,000 from Hoosain’s Restaurant.
They also attempted to steal a desktop computer, damaging it in the process. A fertilizer bag filled with groceries was also left behind.
The bandits gained entry by prising open a window at the back of the building, then pushing aside a cooler that had blocked the window. Police recovered a crowbar at the scene but were unable to pick up fingerprints suggesting that the bandits wore gloves.
Sheriza Hoosain said she and her mother, Edith Hoosain and her sister Shameeza made the discovery when they arrived at the restaurant around 6 am yesterday. She said they were going up the stairs when they noticed the door to the storage area which they had secured, wide open.
Thinking that bandits may still be in the building, they ran to Evil Eyes Store next door and alerted the security guard who accompanied them to check.
She said the entire place was ransacked and empty packets and wrappers were scattered all over. The bandits stole a quantity of items from a glass case and damaged several other packets of the snacks.
Dowlat Ramsingh who owns one of the jewellery workshops said that he lost “gold dust,” a scale and other tools worth almost $40,000. He told Stabroek News that this is the second time his shop was broken into.
Last August he said bandits raided the shop and stole over $200,000 worth in gold jewellery. Since then, he said, he stopped leaving valuables there. The other jeweller who was not around when this newspaper visited lost a quantity of gold.
Mark Lachana, a phone technician, said he lost four phones valued $70,000 that belonged to his customers.
