Seaman chopped in Pigeon Island attack

-one of four suspects held

A seaman is now nursing stab wounds at the Georgetown Public Hos-pital Corporation after he was brutally attacked by four men armed with machetes on Monday at Pigeon Island Squatting Area, East Coast Demerara. One of Rajesh Mangra’s attackers is in police custody but the others managed to escape.

Mangra, 25, of Pigeon Island Squatting Area, was rushed to the hospital after four men chased him along a dam,

Rajesh Mangra
Rajesh Mangra

chopping him several times across his arms and neck. Mangra, also called ‘Ricardo,’ sustained additional injuries to his stomach. The chopping occurred around 18:30 hours.

“One of the boys on the dam come in the yard and told me ‘Aunty your son dead, come see,’ and when we go I see him in a pool of blood groaning for his hands and belly,” Mangra’s mother, Lilowatie said.

The attack stemmed from a recent argument over money that was owed to Mangra by a boat captain, his mother said. She stated that Rajesh had approached the captain about $25,000 and was told that he would not receive the money. Mangra, she said, became enraged and lashed the captain across his head with a glass bottle.

“That get him mad and then they went to the police and Ricardo run and hide behind a paling but I tell he don’t hide if the police want you go so when he come out I see four men running up the dam in our direction,” she related, adding that Mangra told the men that he had no issue with them and that they should leave his yard.

“But one of the man said that the story ain’t done yet and the y run he and he jump over the paling and up the dam…” she recalled, before stating that one of the men rushed back into the yard and tried to chop them but she ran into her house and hid. “I didn’t know that my son get chop. All the time I think he safe,” she said.

She stated that two of the men were villagers and another man she didn’t recognise. The other attacker was a young boy, she said.

After the attack, she said, the police came and rushed Mangra to the hospital. “He stable there but we are waiting on the doctor to tell us what happen to him,” she said.