Bandits strike twice

A FREEPORT couple are in high praise of police who managed to arrest six bandits who robbed them in two separate incidents one day apart.

The couple, who will not be identified as they fear for their safety, were first robbed at gunpoint on Wednesday.

In an interview with the Sunday Newsday, the woman related the first terrifying robbery.

“It was around 11.15 am and I was cooking lunch and my husband was watching a movie, when I went into the bedroom for my pressure tablet,” she recounted. “While I was there I heard my husband say “Babe, it have people,” and then a second later I saw a man come into the room with a gun and he told me ,’If you only move I will shoot you’.”

She said the gunman was wearing a mask and ordered her to hand over her money.

“I gave him my wallet and he kept asking me for more money and telling me I was lying when I said I didn’t have any.”

The gunman spotted her son’s laptop and took it. He then asked her for the laptop charger.

“I told him it was in the other room and he told me to go get it, when I went into the living room, I saw my husband lying face-down on the floor and the other bandit was tying him up.”

The second bandit was armed with a cutlass.

The gunman then demanded jewellery and when the woman said she only had the gold ring she was wearing, he took it off her finger.

“He kept threatening to shoot us and telling me don’t lie about having money.”

Next, he demanded a glass of cold water and a drink of rum.

“I told him we didn’t have any rum or water in the fridge but he could get cold water from the dispenser on the door, he took a glass and was drinking water while his partner was tying me up.”

She said the gunman then stood over her husband and told him he wanted his salary.

“My husband was telling him he didn’t have any money and he started to beat him in his head with the gun, I was crying and begging him to stop cause the lash was sounding like he was chopping him.”

The men left a short while later, warning the couple to wait 20 minutes before trying to get up from the floor. They took the woman’s gold ring, cash, a DVD player, a laptop and charger, a phone and a bull finch.

The woman said she managed to wriggle her hands free from the belt that had been used to bind them.

“They had left the front door open and as soon as I got up, I closed it and called the police, I could see them running down the hill still.”

Minutes later, she saw a neighbour’s son walking past her home and alerted him.

“He say ‘Moms doh say that nah, I cyar believe they do you that,” and he come and stay with us till the police reach. He told the police of the car he had seen the men getting into.”

Freeport police were able to quickly track and capture the men as the getaway vehicle belonged to one of the couple’s neighbours.

“I can’t believe he would do that to us, I have always been nice and helpful to him, his house was burned down about six weeks ago, I gave him an extension for electricity so he could cut wood and ply to build back a house.”

Police recovered all the items except the DVD player and the bull finch and arrested the three men involved.

But the woman’s worries were not over.

The next day, when she and her husband went to the Freeport police station to give official statements, someone broke into their house.

“My son came home from school, saw the front door open and the TV missing, he called me and asked where I was and I told him we would come home in a little while, then he told me we had been robbed again.”

This time the thieves stole a 43-inch smart TV, a gas tank, a spray can, the woman’s pressure testing machine, an extension cord and groceries.

“They climbed in through the toilet and carried the things through the front door.”

But what hurt the woman even more is that another of her neighbour’s’s was responsible.

“They held three of them on Thursday, the same boy who told me what car the men had left in was involved, I can’t believe that either and I always treated him like a son.”

Police were able to recover all of the stolen items from the second robbery and all six men will appear before a Chaguanas magistrate tomorrow.