…escape with day’s sales, US currency

THE Gossai family of Bagotstown, East Bank Demerara has been left in a traumatised state on Monday evening following a brazen robbery at the family’s business establishment by several bandits.

According to Phylis Gossai, around 20:00hrs on Monday evening her son was about to leave the family’s business establishment, R. Gossai Liquor and General Store at Lot 25, Bagotstown, for home when five armed men pounced on him.

The men, she noted, were hiding in the family’s yard. The bandits tied-up her son and took him into the family’s home, while asking for her husband, well-known businessman Rabindranauth Gossai. The 63-year old businessman was at another section of the yard and the bandits later hauled him into the house.

One of the men she noted guarded her and her four year old grandson on the lower flat of the building, while the remaining bandits took her husband and her son upstairs and demanded cash. “They carry them and beat my husband on his head with the guns”, she said. She noted that the bandits took away the day’s savings along with US$5000, cash which was given to her by persons in the US during a recent visit to purchase items.

Mrs Gossai noted that the unmasked bandits emptied the drawers in the family’s bedrooms before escaping on foot. She said that her husband was subsequently taken to the hospital to be treated for the wounds he sustained on his head. He remained hospitalised on Tuesday. The man’s wife noted that the entire ordeal, which lasted less than 20 minutes, has left the family frustrated. She said that Monday was one of the “slower days “for business and her son, who undertake sales for the family , was leaving her home with his four year old son when the bandits struck.

“This is real bad, day time and night time they coming for what you work hard to make”, the woman said in a fearful tone. Ranks of the Providence Police Station revisited the family’s home on Tuesday morning to carry out further investigations into the brazen incident.