– Worked after school to make ends meet

By Rabindra Rooplall
SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Onika Luke of Lot 1 Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara, who would hang up her uniform after school and head for a night job as a waitress to make ends meet, was shot to the face on Friday night after she resisted a gunman’s attempt to rob the Lucky Star Chinese Restaurant in her home village.

Now a patient in the Intensive Care Unit of Woodlands Hospital, Onika gave the police a description of her assailant in writing on a piece of paper as investigations continue.

The bandit reportedly entered the restaurant at about 22:40 hrs and ordered a meal, but while paying for the meal, the man allegedly held on to Luke’s hands as she was behind the barred-off counter, then he pulled out a firearm and demanded cash. The teen resisted the assailant, and was shot to her chin whilst he made good his escape.

Luke’s brother, Rickford Ranjee, said he received a call minutes before 23:00hrs on Friday night, informing him that his sister had been shot in her hands.

“Then Chiney man himself come home by us and tell me put on my clothes because my sister get shoot in she hand. When I rush down to the hospital, the nurse tell me my sister get shoot in her hand and the bone break, and the bullet fly through her chin and is lodged in her throat,” he explained.

The distressed brother said that, in the presence of two policemen at the hospital, his sister wrote on a piece of paper the description of the man who had shot her. She told her brother that the person came into the restaurant and ordered a half-portion vegetable fried rice, and she collected the money from the man. It was when she reached for the drawer that the man snatched her by her jersey neck and pulled her into the grillwork barring the counter.

“Then like when he point the gun to shoot her, she tried boxing it away and the bullet (flew) through her hands, hit her chin and (got stuck) in her throat,” Ranjee explained.
Luke attends St. John’s College, and the brother said it was only three months ago that she decided to start working daily after returning home from school to assist with paying her own bills and look after her development. She would normally work from 17:00hrs to 22:00hrs.

Ranjee said the supermarket adjacent to the restaurant was robbed last year, and a Chinese man had been shot in his leg in that incident.

Ranjee said the same person who had shot his sister had recently threatened to kidnap her after he had noticed her going home late at night. He said she detailed all this to him in writing on a piece of paper on Saturday morning.

She said that the shooter has a tattoo to his neck; it is someone she was accustomed to seeing about the place, he explained.

Residents in the area said the restaurant opened for business almost four months ago.