Rajendra Persaud, who was shot while responding to a robbery at his sister’s house at Wellington Park, Corentyne around 1.40 am on Monday said he did not expect to face such heavily armed bandits.
He told Stabroek News yesterday that he decided to go immediately after receiving the call from his sister, Vasantie ‘Sandra’ Ganesh, because he knew that her husband, Surendra Ganesh, 50, was leaving the country and had left for the airport less than an hour before.
Persaud, the Chief Executive Officer of Nand Persaud & Co Ltd grabbed his weapon and hurried to the scene thinking the men were just petty bandits and that he would have been able to scare them away and protect the family.
Instead, he was shocked when he came under a hail of gunfire as he approached the house.
He recalled that before the gunfire erupted he had slowed down and honked his horn with the intention of distracting the bandits.
Six persons, including three women who have been arrested are still in custody as police continue their investigations.
The headlights from his Toyota Mark 11 car were shining directly at the bandits, he said, but he was unable to see their faces.
He said he noticed four of them standing on top of the patio breaking the wall with sledgehammers but did not see anyone standing in the yard downstairs. He was sure though that there were more than four bandits because the shots which were directed at him came from the yard and from “automatic weapons which discharged a set of rounds in one second.”
In a desperate bid to escape the barrage of bullets, he said, he “ducked down” in the car while accelerating but could not see where he was going and lost control. His vehicle then crashed into a utility pole and ended up in a ditch and into a plough.
In spite of that, Persaud escaped the accident almost unscathed; one bullet grazed his head. He said he “lost a lot of blood and felt a bit weak but I made sure everybody was okay before going to the hospital.”
He was treated at the New Amsterdam Hospital and then admitted at the Balwant Singh Hospital in Georgetown and was discharged on Tuesday.
He recalled that the bandits had almost finished breaking the wall when he got to the scene. Two minutes later, he said, they had entered the house and he observed them moving around.
All this time he was fearful that the bandits would have hurt his sister and her children and was relieved after he found them safe and sound later.
A relative had said the bandits’ “time apparently ran out…”
They escaped with only $5,500 that was in a wallet.
Persaud said in his haste to get to the house he forgot his cellular phone and could not call to inform other relatives what was taking place. His brother, Mohindra, had already informed the police about the robbery though.
He said the supervisor who was driving the other vehicle with the security guard, Arjune Gobin of Bloomfield who was shot dead, had intended to park next to him but before they got there the bandits opened fire.
He said when the police arrived and went into the house he came out of the car and joined them. The police thought no one was in the house but Persaud searched and found Vasantie and her two children and told them it was safe to come out.
Meanwhile, Persaud recalled that his first encounter with heavily armed bandits was during the bank robbery at Rose Hall a few years ago. He said on that day the bandits had terrorized all the customers and only stole his cell phone.
