KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

When an armed ban­dit kicked down the bed­room door where a Ste Madeleine busi­ness­man and his wife slept, he did not hes­i­tate to pro­tect his fam­i­ly and fa­tal­ly shot the in­vad­er.
The 64-year-old su­per­mar­ket own­er, who will not be iden­ti­fied for his safe­ty, told Guardian Me­dia that while he was sor­ry for the death of 18-year-old Jodel Roach of Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain, he had lit­tle op­tion but to shoot.

His three chil­dren were all cow­er­ing in their bed­room un­der the eyes of three oth­er ban­dits who en­tered his home in St Clement around 2.30 am yes­ter­day.

The busi­ness­man and his fam­i­ly were asleep when six men climbed over the gate and the in­ner wall. There they turned the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era and four of them used a 20-foot alu­mini­um lad­der to get up to his kitchen. Us­ing a crow­bar, they pried open the win­dow and en­tered. They went to his chil­dren’s bed­room and forced them to lay on the ground as they rum­maged through the house. His youngest son, who was awak­ened by the ban­dits en­ter­ing the kitchen, was struck in his head with the gun. Their moth­er heard the com­mo­tion and told their fa­ther “ban­dits in the house.” The busi­ness­man said his first in­stinct was to grab his gun and try to de­fend his fam­i­ly.

“I was rude­ly awak­ened by a ban­dit who kicked down the en­trance door to my bed­room and there was this tall guy who came in there with a gun. I had no oth­er choice but to pull my li­censed firearm to de­fend my­self, my wife who was in the room with me and al­so my three chil­dren who were in the oth­er rooms with ban­dits who had them on the ground,” the busi­ness­man said.

With a shot to the cen­tre of his fore­head, Roach fell to the floor with his pis­tol ly­ing next to him.

The busi­ness­men said they were able to es­cape with his moth­er’s two watch­es, his daugh­ter’s cell phone and two watch­es and oth­er items. The lad­der re­mained at the house and la­tex gloves that they ban­dits used were thrown along a side street. His youngest son was tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed for the blow to his head and was dis­charged.

South­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice re­spond­ed, but by the time they ar­rived, the sus­pect was al­ready dead.

The in­va­sion oc­curred 12 hours af­ter a ban­dit was shot dead dur­ing a rob­bery in Cou­va. It was the sec­ond fight back with­in hours as a se­cu­ri­ty guard fa­tal­ly shot and wound­ed an­oth­er ban­dit who at­tempt­ed to rob Savi’s Clas­sic Jew­el­ry on Mon­day.