Two men sustained gunshot wounds in separate robberies Monday night in Georgetown, police have confirmed. Armed bandits barged into the home of businessman Nicholas Coates at Eping Avenue, Bel Air Park around 20:15h, gun-butted him to the head and shot him to his right knee in a failed robbery attempt.
Speaking to Guyana Chronicle Monday evening at the hospital, Coates, 30, said he had retired from a day’s work and had just walked into the patio with a cup of tea in his hand when five masked bandits, armed with handguns and pistols, walked up the stairs and into his home demanding that he hand over to them valuables. “They hit me and tell me “let we see what you gat,” he related to this publication.
He said he threw the cup of hot tea on the gunmen and fought his way out of the patio running into his bedroom. While he was about to close the bedroom door one of the men pushed his hand holding a gun into the room and shot him to his knee. Coates slammed the door but while reaching for his gun the men managed to charge into the room and he began discharging shots. The gunmen then ran out of his home and into a waiting car. It was then that he believes one of the bandits might have been wounded since he saw trails of blood on the floor of his home along the path the men took to leave.
Coates said during the altercation with the bandits he observed that while some of them tried to pull the trigger gunshots were not fired and he suspects that the barrels of the guns were empty. He is a patient at a city hospital.
Meanwhile, in another robbery in Albouystown, another businessman was relieved of a quantity of cash and jewelry and was shot multiple times. Berkumar Ramketan, 46, a vendor at La Penitence Market in Georgetown was up to press time in Intensive Care Unit receiving emergency surgical attention at a city hospital. His aunt Anita Argune sat nervously outside the theatre block at the hospital hoping for good news. She told this newspaper that around 17:50h she was at home with her grand-daughter when her nephew who had just closed up the market stall, was walking into the yard. She said she heard an altercation and gunshots rang out triggering her and the teenage child to run for cover into their kitchen. “I was in the hammock with this little girl when we hear the scramble. We run and shots were fired. She holler and I push she in the kitchen and pull the door,” she told this newspaper.
As she was about to lock the door a bullet grazed her left foot, and the bandits escaped into a waiting white car the woman said. Neighbours telephoned the police who responded quickly and transported the wounded man to the hospital. The woman said he received gunshot wounds to both legs and in the area of his left side abdomen. Those of the bandits she saw were all masked and “they short and squatty,” the woman said. The man was robbed of a quantity of cash which he received from the day’s sales, and two gold rings. Police are investigating.