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Widow recounts
deadly robbery attack
 WOUNDED: Shireen Khan |
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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. |
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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.