EMPLOYEES at Fullworks Auto Parts on the East Coast of Demerara remain traumatised, while one of their colleagues was up to yesterday still nursing wounds at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC), after Wednesday afternoon’s armed raid on the store.

At around 14:20 hrs last Wednesday, two gunmen posing as customers raided the auto parts store at 58 Public Road, Good Hope, East Coast Demerara, carting away $900,000 and brutally assaulting employees.
A staff member was dashed to the ground after he had been kicked in his stomach by one of the gunmen and ordered to stay quiet. The gunman then struck the man in his head with his weapon.
Another staff member was also struck in his head with a gun, and had to be admitted to the GPHC to treat a swelling to his head.
Later that evening, police chased a beige car they believed to be the one that the gunmen had escaped in. Four men were arrested but none was identified as a robber.
Ravi Ali, an employee of Fullworks and a relative of its owner, Mohammed Ali, told the Guyana Chronicle on Thursday that he was attending to a customer when he saw two men of African descent dressed in white tee shirts and jeans walk into the store and stop in front of him. The shorter man asked him the price of a car front, and he replied that it was $100,000. The men then turned away and walked out.
“Suddenly they turn back and shouted, ‘Get on the ground! Everybody get on the ground!’”  Ali recalled, adding that one of the customers was forced to lie on the ground.
“One of the staff (members is) deaf, so he couldn’t hear (when they commanded everybody to get on the ground) and they lash he in the head and his nose break,” Ali said.
Ali related that the other gunman shoved his gun in the cashier’s stomach, demanding the money. The girl wept and begged them not to hurt her. She gave them the money, and they ran out of the store and jumped into a beige car, which had a driver.
He said that the cashier did not report to work on Thursday because she was still traumatised by the incident. Another staff recalled that, on the day of the robbery, he had left the store to buy his lunch. “I just step out for lunch and in a split second a man run up to me and say ‘Fullworks just get robbed!’
“Three years I’m working here and nothing like this never happen. I’m frightened to work here,” the man said.
Ali said that they were experiencing blackouts that day, and therefore the surveillance cameras didn’t capture any images.