Gunmen attack, rob Bourda Market vendors

IN SHOCK: Bourda greens vendor Oma holds on to her basket of callaloo as she tries to move on after being attacked by gunmen early yesterday. (Cullen Bess-Nelson photos)

ATTACKED: This is the spot on the road at Bourda where Indra Samlall, left, and her husband, Vincent Makhan, centre, were robbed by gunmen early yesterday.

GREENS vendors at Bourda Market, Georgetown experienced a terrifying upstage to their usual vending activities before dawn yesterday when about six gun-toting youths went on a robbery spree.

Vendors claimed that City Constables went into hiding when the bandits struck at around 04:45 h, leaving them unprotected and unable to prevent the “lil (little) boys” from walking off casually with their money, jewellery, cellular phones and other items.

Indra Samlall said she and her husband Vincent Makhan were selling wholesale on the road, as they usually do when they bring goods from Black Bush Polder in Berbice, when the bandits struck.

She said two of them approached her and bought limes and cucumbers. But one of them suddenly jammed a gun to her waist, while another held down her husband, she related.

Bhagwandai Singh points to where the bandits held a gun to her before she was robbed early yesterday at Bourda Market.

She was forced to give up her cash and cellular phone. Her husband’s gold ring was taken away.
Samlall said she and her husband could do nothing, as the men walked off, with the constables nowhere in sight.

She said they next grabbed another vendor and robbed him. The man, Seechan Shewpersad said they took more than $100,000 from him, which he was going to use to buy goods for the day.

“This is what we do for a living, we need protection,” Oma, another vendor complained.

She and a fellow vendor, Bhagwandai Singh, had arrived in the same car. When she got out of the car, she said one of the men snatched her bag with her money and other

MOVING ON: Seechan Shewpersad went back straight to business after youths robbed him at gunpoint early yesterday.

items off her shoulder. When she started to scream, they threatened to shoot her, she related.

Singh said she was hardly out of the car when a gun was put to her neck and the men demanded her bag which contained her money.

The vendors said the bandits then walked simply walked away.

They said the City Constables showed up a little while later and when they started to complain, they were abused.

The Police said they are investigating. (NEIL MARKS)

Saturday, March 04, 2006