A Foulis East Coast carpenter died after he sustained a single gunshot wound to the neck while asleep in his bed some time around 10 pm on Saturday night.
Vickesh Budhram, 25, of 642 Seventeenth Street, Foulis, East Coast Demerara was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital around 11.28 pm on Saturday night. His wife Basmattie Rambharose called ‘Roma’ who was asleep on the bed next to him when he was shot said that she awoke to a loud noise and saw two black figures running from their bedroom. Robbery was not the motive since the family lost no valuables and no one else was harmed during the shooting.
Speaking to Stabroek News yesterday the woman said that when she awoke she saw the two “fine people” running from the room. “Them had on all over black…” Asked whether the assailants were wearing masks the woman said that she could not really say as she was in a state of panic.
“After I see them meh turn round and start fuh shake meh husband, he watch me, mek wha [gurgling] sound and then he quiet,” Rambharose said. Explaining that she did not see the blood at the time but when she continued to shake him she realized he was bleeding.
Rambharose said that the bullet exited the man’s neck passed through the headboard of the bed and slammed into the concrete wall behind the bed. The police recovered one shell, she said.
She said too that their one-year-old daughter was on a made-up bed on the floor when the incident occurred.
The dead man’s mother Patsy strove for composure as she talked to Stabroek News at the family’s home. She explained that the family would normally be downstairs late at nights chatting with each other but had retired earlier than usual on Saturday night.
The last time the woman saw her son was when he came downstairs with his eldest daughter in tow. He had just finished making a bottle of tea for his smaller daughter and had taken it upstairs, but the other girl wanted to come down to her grandmother. Patsy said that the child, her daughter Amerita and she were watching television downstairs. Her daughter left them and went upstairs, using the inside steps. A little while later the child got sleepy so she decided to take her upstairs. She locked the door but did not turn off the lights and she also did not bother to padlock the gate to the yard, which she would normally do before retiring, since her husband and another son were out.
Instead of taking the child to her parents’ room, where she normally sleeps, she took her to her uncle’s room since the man was not at home. She attempted to leave her in the room but she said that she was frightened so she stayed with her, falling asleep in the process. At this point her son and daughter-in-law were downstairs bathing she related.
“Is a loud noise wake me and then I hear footsteps running… but like meh na focus really,” Patsy said. She said she heard her daughter-in-law hollering, “Come see what happen to Vickesh,” and that is when she got up, but at the same time the little girl started to cry so she went back into the room to get her. When she finally got to the couple’s bedroom she saw her son on the bed bleeding, and her daughter-in-law holding the other child crying.
Patsy says that she did not see anyone in the house.
Another son Anil Budhram was the first to reach the bedroom after the shouts; he too was awakened by the loud noise. He said when he ran out of his bedroom there was no one in the house and no one strange in his brother’s bedroom either. He came back outside and locked the door to the outside steps, which the family said had been locked when they retired.
Ganesh Budhram, the father of the dead man, came home in the middle of events but was not aware of what was happening until he heard the screaming from upstairs.
He said that he pushed open the gate and noticed that the downstairs door was open; his wife told Stabroek News that she had locked the door before going upstairs. He was crossing the threshold when he heard “something like a squib” going off. He went upstairs via the inside steps where he saw what happened. The man said that he did not see anyone or notice anything out of the ordinary while downstairs. The man remembered that earlier in the afternoon he was discussing cricket with his son, but then he left to go and drink with some friends.
Some time after seeing her husband Patsy said that she ran outside and started screaming. “I run down the road and then people start fuh come out.”
Rambharose said that a taxi came, but the driver said that police had to come to remove the body since the man was already dead. She said that the police came some half-an-hour later, “after the taxi man go fuh them… them tell we how he they feel pulse on he hand… but when we reach the hospital he bin dead already.” Rambharose said.
The neighbour opposite to the Budhrams said that she jumped out of her sleep after she heard something like “zinc falling.” She and her husband after hearing the screaming across the street ventured over to their neighbour’s. She said that neither she nor her husband considered that it was a gunshot they had heard and therefore probably unsafe to go outside. However they did not see anyone running or anything suspicious when they came out.
The family insists that to the best of their knowledge the dead carpenter had no problems with anyone. “So much people he wuk with… nobody ever complained bout he thiefing nothing or so,” his mother said. She also said that her son, unlike his father and brothers, would spend most of his evenings at home with his wife and children.
Meanwhile a police press release said that the police were investigating the murder of the man who was shot in the right side of his neck around 22:30 hrs on Saturday night. The release said that the police had recovered a 7.62×39 spent shell at the scene.
