La Penitence shop owner shot during robbery

A city shop owner is now hospitalised after he was shot when two bandits pulled off a daring daylight robbery yesterday.

David Sukhnandan, 42, of North La Penitence, was selling in his shop, located at the bottom flat of his house, around 11.30AM yesterday when the two robbers, posing as customers, visited on the pretext of wanting to purchase gas.

Sukhnandan’s mother, who did not want to be named, explained that it was when he opened the gate to sell the customers that a man and woman barged in and held him at gunpoint.

“I was upstairs, me and my daughter and my lil grandson and all I heard is my son screaming and hollering at the top of his voice and I done know is thieves ’cause they come several times and mek attempt,” she said.

David Sukhnandan’s shop
David Sukhnandan’s shop

She pointed out that bandits had invaded the home and killed Sukhnandan’s wife several years ago.

“I see the car de park up there, a white car, but I didn’t know anything and I get so confused when I hear all the commotion I beg them and I seh please don’t kill my son,” the woman added, while noting that the traumatic ordeal only got worse after she heard about four shots.

“I hear the shots and I keep begging and pleading and telling them he got two children and don’t kill he,” the woman said.

She said eventually she shut the door and started praying to God to spare her son.

After a while, she noted, there was silence and when she peeped outside she saw the white car that was parked over the road speed off. “After it get quiet I say he already dead and I start cry and I send me daughter down to check, thinking that he dead but then we see him on the ground and he seh he get shoot,” she said.

The woman said that hearing her son’s voice brought relief to her and she rushed downstairs to find him with a bleeding bullet wound to his thigh.

He was subsequently rushed to the hospital. Sukhnandan’s sister explained that the two bandits were a male and female and they had escaped with groceries and some money.

Sukhnandan is currently admitted at a private hospital.