Widow
recounts deadly robbery attack
 WOUNDED: Shireen Khan |
|
As
friends and neighbours were putting up a shed for the wake, she recalled the
horror of the daylight Sunday attack in which gunmen cold-bloodedly killed her
husband as she watched.
Five
heavily armed men, clad in bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on them,
attacked the business premises at Lot 22, Better Hope South, where they
terrorised the couple in a three minute ordeal before shooting Bassoo twice in
the head at pointblank range.
They
then fled in a car with a quantity of cash and jewellery.
Recounting
the horrifying ordeal yesterday, Khan, 39, said she and her 44-year-old
husband were at home at about 14:40 hrs.
The woman, who also sustained gunshot wounds when two bullets grazed her left leg, and was beaten by the bandits, said she was in the shop seconds before the men attacked
Widow
recounts deadly robbery attack
 GOING UP: neighbours and friends of slain businessman, Ralph Bassoo yesterday putting up a tent in the businessman's yard for his wake. |
|
SHIREEN
Khan, nursing bullet wounds, was yesterday trying to come to grips with
the reality that her husband of 14 years, East Coast Demerara businessman, Ralph
Bassoo, was no longer alive.
As
friends and neighbours were putting up a shed for the wake, she recalled the
horror of the daylight Sunday attack in which gunmen cold-bloodedly killed her
husband as she watched.
Five
heavily armed men, clad in bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on them,
attacked the business premises at Lot 22, Better Hope South, where they
terrorised the couple in a three minute ordeal before shooting Bassoo twice in
the head at pointblank range.
They
then fled in a car with a quantity of cash and jewellery.
Recounting
the horrifying ordeal yesterday, Khan, 39, said she and her 44-year-old
husband were at home at about 14:40 hrs.
The
woman, who also sustained gunshot wounds when two bullets grazed her left leg,
and was beaten by the bandits, said she was in the shop seconds before the men
attacked.
She said
she had noticed a dark grey car passing by shortly before but did not pay much
attention to it and went inside.
"Immediately
after I heard someone knocking at the counter and when I look out there was a
man at the counter and he had a gun in his hand...he was looking at the shop
and at the front door," the visibly shaken widow recalled.
Realising
that it was a bandit, Khan said she dropped to the ground and crawled to a
window where her bedroom is situated and tried to wake her husband who was
sleeping.
"By
the time I was doing that I could hear them opening the bolt on the front
(grill) door and by then two men were already in the bedroom with guns,"
she said.
She said
that by this time her husband was awake and the bandits accosted them outside
the bedroom.
They
herded them into the shop where they started to beat them and demand cash and
jewellery and "the gun", she recounted.
Khan
said the men were kicking her about the body and her husband asked them why
were they still beating her since she had already given them all the money and
jewellery.
The
traumatised woman said one of the bandits told his accomplice in the shop
"to shoot the f...ing man" which he did, at point blank range.
The
bandits escaped with about $300,000 in jewellery and about $200,000 in cash,
she said.
"I
really don't know what to do right now. But I will carry on the business. I
have to work, I have my son and we have to eat. It's not fair but that's
life", she said.
The
businessman's stepson, Christopher, 18, was attending a wedding in Enmore on
the lower East Coast Demerara at the time of the attack.
The
young man said he was informed about the tragedy by friends who had left
Better Hope to go and get him in Enmore.
Christopher
said his stepfather, with whom he had lived for some 14 years, was
"a very good person...very kind, friendly and willing to assist
anyone."
"He
never trouble or hurt nobody. If anyone sick or something in the area, no
matter if it's 1:00 o'clock in the morning, he is always willing to take them
to the hospital," he recalled.
A
neighbour said a bullet pierced a zinc sheet on the roof of a house about
three yards away from the business place that the bandits attacked.
The
neighbour said everything happened in about three minutes.
A
witness said there were five bandits - four Afro-Guyanese, including one
Rastafarian, and one Indo-Guyanese.
They
were all wearing bulletproof vests with 'Police' written on them.
The Police were yesterday continuing investigations into the robbery/killing.
