Chateau Margot bandits on tape

Close-circuit Television (CCTV) footage of the attempted robbery at Chateau Margot, which left a businessman and an attacker dead on Tuesday morning, has been reviewed by police and has aided in the hunt for three robbers who managed to escape. While Commander of Police C Division, Assistant Commissioner Gavin Primo did not address the CCTV issue when he spoke with Stabroek News

Dennis Ramah

yesterday he said that police are working with “intelligence” they have gathered.

Investigators, according to Primo, have gathered “call names” of the men on the run and will be using its gathered “intelligence” to identify them. Two men were taken into custody following Tuesday morning’s attempted robbery at L&D Shopping Centre where the owner Dennis Ramah was shot twice and died. A third perpetrator was shot to death.

The CCTV footage, Stabroek News was reliably informed, was secured from the area by law enforcement officials.

The footage, a source said, is of “reasonable quality” and should help police in identifying the three robbers on the run.

However, some concern was raised about the police’s ability to “process” the images the recording has made available to them. The Guyana Police Force has not done too well in recent years with enhancing CCTV footage lacking in quality.

Some time before 9.30 am that day one of six robbers visited the Second Street, Chateau Margot sales centre to buy an item. A short time later Nigel Ramah, son of the dead businessman, told Stabroek News that five men returned and held up employees. The sixth man was driving a yellow car in which he and two other perpetrators escaped.

His father was in the lower flat business when the five men, one armed with a gun and another with knife police later said, help up the employees and took them to the upper flat where family members were. The elder Ramah put fear aside, armed himself with a cutlass, made his way up the back stairway of his house and chopped the robber with the gun.

In retaliation the robber shot Dennis twice. The businessman, a GPHC release later said, was pronounced dead on arrival at the medical institution.

Minutes after the failed robbery, as four of the robbers ran towards the Chateau Margot Railway Embank-ment Road they were confronted by Chairman of the Community Policing Group, 51- year-old Davenand Shyamraj. Following an exchange of gunfire Shyamraj and a passer-by, 72-year-old Daniel Muller, were injured.

Police later discovered alleged bandit Victor Bobb and a dead man a short distance away in La Bonne Intention (LBI). Bobb remains a patient at GPHC. When this newspaper visited the hospital yesterday, the man was handcuffed to his bed with a sheet over his face. The second man in police custody has been identified as Quincy Arthur while the dead perpetrator remains unidentified.

Same ward with a bandit? No way!
Meanwhile, Shyamraj and Muller are both improving. Shyamraj has since been discharged from a private city hospital while Muller remains a patient at GPHC.

Muller, the passer-by who was injured by two of the fleeing men, had undergone surgery to remove the bullet from his right arm. He told Stabroek News yesterday that he was heading home from the LBI Dispensary where he went to have his blood pressure tested.

After he was told that his blood pressure was normal the man was making his way back to his Success Housing Scheme home. “Me feel me shoulder burning,” Muller said, as he was on his bicycle. He pointed out that he did not notice the fleeing men.

“Me ain’t remember nothing when ah catch back ma self me get stupid like,” he added. The man regained consciousness in the hospital.

Residents have since noted Shyamraj’s courageous response to the situation. When Stabroek News spoke with the man last evening he said that he had given police a statement several hours before and did not think it wise to make his experience public.

Earlier yesterday an upset Mrs Shyamraj told Stabroek News that her husband was moved to a private hospital after he was admitted to the same ward with one of the perpetrators. “I don’t think it is safe to get him and the bandit in the same room, do you?” the woman questioned.

Further, Mrs Shyamraj expressed her dissatisfaction at the manner in which her husband was treated. She said that he was admitted to the ward without surgery on his leg to remove the bullet. He was not given any medication she added. “He bear the pain whole day,” the distressed woman said.

Shyamraj later told this newspaper that he waited for about four hours at the GPHC before he was seen by medical personnel. However, the man said that he did not want to “make a big thing out of it”.