FIFTY-eight-year-old Loki Narine, the businessman shot in the neck and abdomen when a gang of armed men entered his shop at Surat Drive, Triumph, East Coast Demerara on Monday night, remained in a critical condition in the Intensive Care Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation last night. His wife Drupattie and son Rajkumar, 23, who waited nervously outside the hospital’s ICU yesterday afternoon, awaiting the 16:30 (visiting) hrs, said he has slipped into a state of unconsciousness after arriving at the hospital on Monday night, and has since remained that way.

Additionally, the injured man’s family related that even though he was rushed to theatre the same night in order to have the bullets removed, because of the positions in which they are lodged, it was subsequently decided not to remove them at this time.

Relatives recalled that around 21:00 hrs on Monday night, the businessman (a father of three) was sitting behind his counter and the outer door to the shop was shut, when a gang of about three young men, some armed with guns, walked up to the door.

They ordered him to ‘open up’, but he sensed that something was amiss and refused to. This incurred the wrath of the bandits, who began demanding that he hand his money over to them. After he still did not cooperate, the men began  discharging rounds into the shop, through the grill work on the door. He was struck in the neck and abdomen and fell to the ground.

Rajkumar, who was not at home when the armed men turned up at the shop, said he received a phone call from a cousin who told him to come home, since there was a robbery on the road outside of his home in the street.

“What she told me, led me to believe that the incident was on the road, and she did not say that my dad was the target,” he was recounted dolefully.  He said that by then the bandits had fled the scene, ‘empty-handed’, after not getting a chance to enter the shop.

Fearful for her life, Loki’s wife Drupattie, who hid in their dwelling house on realising that her husband was under attack, came out of hiding after the men had left.  With the help of a relative who lives nearby, they managed to contact her son Rajkumar, who recalled: “When we got into the building I saw my father lying on the floor bleeding.  My cousin blurted out that he ‘looked dead’, and I touched him.  He was still conscious, and on hearing that, and feeling my touch, he turned slightly, so I could know he was alive.”

He said they propped him up and lifted him out of the house and into a car, then raced down to the Georgetown Public Hospital. His father communicated with them briefly, Rajkumar recalled, but that was the last time.  Now they are hoping and praying for his recovery.

Still traumatised, but trying to remain calm as he spoke yesterday, Rajkumar  recalled that his father was – about four or five years ago, the victim of another robbery attack made on the premises.  At that time, armed bandits had entered and gun-butted him on the head and made off with cash.