Bandits early yesterday shot a young couple during a robbery at Kaneville, East Bank Demerara and also terrorized other members of the family, assaulting them and later in the day, in phone calls, threatened to return.
In the terrifying ordeal, which lasted about ten minutes, the bandits, one of whom was armed with a handgun, hit children, including a two-year-old, while demanding money and threatening to kill them. Police have arrested one suspect and are working on leads to identify the others.
Linda King, 21, who is pregnant, was shot in her right calf while her boyfriend, Akeem Ames, 18, was wounded when a bullet grazed his left shoulder. King was treated at the Diamond Diagnostic Centre and sent away. Yesterday morning, the family received five threatening phone calls with the caller saying that they (bandits) would return. On one occasion, when a Stabroek News reporter was present at the home, a call was received but when it was answered, no one spoke and after several queries, the person on the other end, hung up. Michelle Menezes, the owner of the fragile ply-board and zinc home close to thick bushes aback Kaneville was the one whom the bandits were seeking as they repeatedly asked about her.
The still shaken woman recounted to Stabroek News yesterday that she escaped when the bandits entered. Police said that the attack occurred at about 1 am yesterday.
Menezes said that at around this time, she heard a noise made by a piece of zinc, which forms a part of the sagging floor. She said that at first she thought it was one of her sons who had gotten up to relieve himself and she asked what he was doing outside. But when she peeked out, she saw the door opening and a man in a red jersey, who was the one armed with the gun, said “police, police”. But when he said this, he pulled a mask over his face and Menezes said that she realized that it was not the cops. Apart from her, her seven children, her mother, Eugene Walters, a brother, and King were in the home at the time.
“They come neat in this house like they know this house”, Menezes said. She said that there were at least four: one with the gun, another stood by the door, while another ransacked the house and there was one waiting outside. The armed bandit demanded money. “He sey somebody got to dead here tonight and then he come in and start terrorizing the children”, she recalled. King and Ames as well as a few of the other children had been watching a movie and had fallen asleep on the floor. The bandit had asked for “the lady who does go in the bush”. Menezes sometimes accompanied her husband, who works in the interior as a miner, to work to make ends meet.
When she realized it was bandits and heard what was said, she kept silent, Menezes recalled. “I was upset when I saw them guys. It was fire. I start panicking then I sey Michelle you got to escape”, she recounted. She managed to slip away undetected and once outside, saw another man, apparently a member of the gang but he was closer to another home in the neighbourhood. Menezes fled and asked neighbours to call the police.
Meantime, inside the home, King said that she saw as the man advanced to them. “Akeem turn and tell he, boss, doan kill nobody. Tek everything you want”, she recounted. She said that the bandit responded: “Yuh eyes pass me. I want the money. I come for that”. She said that they were still lying on the floor and the gunman took out a bullet and thrust it in front of Akeem’s face and asked whether he thought it was a joke. He then gun-butted the young man in the head and then fired a shot at him. But Akeem was lying in such a position that the bullet grazed his shoulder, which bled. He acted as though he was badly wounded and during the ordeal, when he saw an opportunity to escape, he took it.
Meantime, another bandit stood guard at the door while another ransacked the house. The gunman, saying that they wanted the little ones first, took two of the younger children outside, leaned them against a tree and asked where the money was while holding the gun to their heads. They also did this for a couple of the other children, placing the gun in one girl’s mouth. The bandits kept asking for Menezes. With the commotion, Menezes’ two-year-old daughter awoke and began crying. The gunman had returned and holding the gun against the baby’s head threatened to shoot her. He also hit her causing her ear to bleed.
King said that she pleaded for them not to do the child anything and that was when the bandit shot her. She was also assaulted with the gun and the bandit kept asking where the money was, and in her traumatized state, she called the name of Menezes sister, Yonette Walters, who lives close by. Meantime, another bandit grabbed the elderly Eugene Walters, threw her down from the bed, dragged her across the floor to where King was, all the while demanding money.
Following this, they grabbed the wounded King by her clothes and took her over to Yonette’s home, located in the same yard. As they did so, they beat her in her back and abdomen telling her that they would shoot the baby out of her. As they choked her by the neck, they kicked down Walters’ door while demanding the “chicken money”. Walters rears chickens for a living.
She told Stabroek News that earlier, she had heard her mother crying out and was going to investigate but was forced to flee when two shots were fired at her. She said that when her door was kicked down, the bandit asked her if she was Yonette and she responded in the affirmative and they asked her where the money was. She said that she responded that she had no money. The bandits then asked for the youngest child in the house and Yonette’s seven-year-old daughter came out. She looked at her mother, saw her with her hands up in the air and immediately put her hands up too. “She sey no, we don’t have no money cause we ain’t eat for the day”, Yonette recounted. The bandit had hit Yonette with the gun to her forehead and also did the same to the child. After realizing that the family had nothing, the bandits fled when one of them said that the police were coming.
In her home, the bandits had found $475,000 which she had saved up. Menezes worked in the interior and built up her savings hoping that by Christmas she would fix the floor and posts of her leaning wood and zinc house. They were repairing the fragile house “piece, piece”, Menezes said.
The police took King to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre where she was treated and sent away.
Menezes has lived in Kaneville for 15 years and this is the first time she was robbed, she said. She believed that it was persons from the area who robbed them. Police arrested one suspect but when they went to another suspect’s home, they learnt that he had fled yesterday morning. Menezes said that yesterday, she received several threatening phone calls. “Don’t fuss, we coming back”, one unidentified caller said, she recounted. She received another call and the person asked who they were speaking to and when she refused to identify herself, the person at the other end of the line said that they were returning. After one suspect was caught, she received another phone call. “One get catch and two more foh go. We coming back”, the caller said.
“Somebody tell them about me and it got to be somebody close”, Menezes said. “They calling me and threatening me and I don’t like it”, she said. She said that robberies were “a norm” in Kaneville. While she was satisfied with the police response, she was still afraid and wanted more patrols in the area. The police had promised to up patrols in the night though, she noted.
