A
23-YEAR-OLD businessman and two of his employees were beaten
on Wednesday night when bandits stormed into his home and fled
with $215,000 cash, a large quantity of jewels, documents and
other articles.
Jamal
Dwarka, Managing Director of Goldfield Inc. Enterprises at
Lot ‘C’ Public Road, Eccles, East Bank Demerara, had just
returned home about 23:00 h when his back door was kicked in
by six masked gunmen.
One
of the wounded employees, Derick Hendricks, told the Guyana
Chronicle he and another worker were asleep when they were
awakened by two masked gunmen and tied up.
“They
elbowed me from the hammock where I was sleeping at the back
of the house and told me to shut up and gun-butted me on the
head,” he recalled.
The
21-year-old said they tied his hands with a piece of wire, cut
a clothes line and bound his feet, tied a bed sheet around his
mouth before placing him to lie on the ground between some
pipes.
They
instructed his companion, Bryan Edwards, 23, to go to the back
door and call out for the Dwarka, he said.
Hendricks
said that after his boss did not open the door, Edwards told
the bandits he was going to the side of the house to call for
him but he scaled the fence and ran to the nearby gas station
to call the police.
He
said the bandits then kicked open the back door, stormed into
Dwarka’s apartment and began terrorising his wife Lidya and
their two-year-old son.
The
intruders began beating Dwarka in the presence of his family
with their guns and he grabbed his wife and attempted to jump
through a window on the northern side of the house in a bid to
escape.
But
he was pulled back by the bandits who took away jewels,
passports and other articles, relatives said.
Dwarka
was taken to his office on the bottom flat of the building
which the gunmen ransacked, and the cash and keys to a car
were handed over to them before they fled.
Dwarka’s
mother, 42-year-old Janet Dwarka, told the Guyana Chronicle
she was asleep around that time in her section of the house
but was awakened by the gunshots and did not know there was a
robbery.
Hendricks
and Edwards are from Paramakatoi in Region Eight (Potaro/Siparuni)
and have been employed with the Dwarkas for about two years on
their poultry and cash crops farms.
Neighbours
said they heard rapid gunshots about 23:30 h and saw several
vehicles circling the block but did not go out to investigate.
A
police patrol which was in the area confronted the bandits who
fired several shots at them while escaping.
On
May 3 last year, Jamal’s father, Gobin Dwarka, 46, and Deon
Williams, the 10-year-old son of an employee, died on the spot
at Dora on the Linden/Soesdyke Highway when the pickup they
were in with five others crashed after a tyre blew out.
The group was returning from their Ituni farm when tragedy
struck.
