Owner shot in Vryheid’s Lust supermarket robbery

A Chinese businessman was shot last evening when bandits attacked his supermarket at Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara.

The two bandits who carried out the attack robbed the Wisdom Supermarket of a sum of cash and two large bottles of vodka and one of them shot Hua Kang Huang in his leg because he was taking too long to complywith their demands.

Priya, an employee of the supermarket, told Stabroek News that she and another worker were with a customer when the men entered. She said they walked into the supermarket around 8:50PM and appeared as if they were customers. However, one of the men subsequently approached the owner’s wife and demanded cash.

“He run up to the boss lady counter and tell she he want all the money and pint de gun at her and tell her he want it all,” the woman said.

She added that the man’s accomplice approached Huang and demanded money from him. “Then the fine one go around to the mistress cashier and took the money and tried to force her to open the safe and the other one start slap the boss up and tell he to open the safe faster. After the boss was taking a lil while, he pick up a GT beer bottle and threatened to beat him with it,” she further stated, before adding that after her boss took some more time to open the safe the bandit shot him in his left leg.

“We just hear a gunshot and we see the boss man fall flat on he face and the drawer with money fall on the ground and all pitch out,” Priya added.

She said the bandit who shot Huang subsequently “scrabbled” a pile of money from the floor, while the other one took the money from the cash register and two large bottles of vodka and fired a shot into the ceiling. She said the two men ran out, jumped over the unfinished fence and escaped in a white Toyota 212 that was parked about 50 feet away from the supermarket.

Two customers were in the shop at the time of the attack and were forced to take cover on the ground.

Police arrived soon after the attack. “They come quick but the bandits were quicker,” a resident said, while noting that police responded within five minutes but the bandits already escaped by then. According to resident, two suspicious vehicles were noticed circling the area several times during the day.

The supermarket was only recently built as Huang, 30, has only been in the country for two years.

Huang was being treated at the Georgetown Public Hospital up to press time.