Canada-based sisters are latest targets of airport bandits

Just an hour after arriving in Guyana, two Canada-based sisters were robbed and beaten at gunpoint by bandits who had apparently trailed them from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
Estel Latchman and her sister, Gloria Stevenson, were attacked at around 03.00hrs on Wednesday while sitting in a taxi outside a relative’s home at Leonara, West Coast Demerara. Mrs. Latchman said that she was gun-butted repeatedly on the head after she refused to hand over her bag. She suffered a gash which required six stitches.
The robbers escaped in a car with the women’s handbags, which contained $1,500 (Canadian), cameras, cell phones, bank cards and travel documents.
Mrs. Latchman told Kaieteur News that she and her sister arrived in Guyana at around 02.05 hrs on Wednesday, and were picked up by a taxi driver whose services she had previously used. The driver took them to a relative’s home at Leonara, where a wake was being held. However, when they arrived at around 03.00 hrs, the guests had left and the gate was shut.
“We stopped and the driver was phoning (the relative) for the gate to be opened when somebody smashed the window by the driver’s side and pulled him out,” Mrs. Latchman said.
She was sitting in the back seat and another man, also with a handgun, came to her window and tried to grab her bag.
“All they were saying is don’t scream or we will shoot, but we were screaming. I was not letting go of my bag and he was hitting me in the head and on my hands and I began to get weak.”
She eventually released her bag, and the bandits reportedly entered a nearby car and headed east up the West Coast Demerara public road.
Mrs. Latchman said she was drenched in blood after her ordeal. The Canada-based Guyanese said she was upset that ranks from the Leonora Police Station never visited the scene. Instead, the victims were told to make a report at the station. The injured woman was treated at the Leonora Cottage Hospital.
Kaieteur News was told that that police questioned the driver for several hours before releasing him.
A senior police official told Kaieteur News that one of the victims gave officials a partial licence number of a grey-coloured vehicle in which the robbers allegedly escaped. Police also attempted to identify the vehicle from security cameras at the Demerara Harbour Bridge. However, the images were too poor to be of any use to investigators.
Police have vowed to smash gangs that have been repeatedly targeting travelers to and from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
Just recently, Pastor Sewnauth Poonalall of the Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church was gun-butted and robbed shortly after returning from the airport with some overseas guests