Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A Ste Madeleine dou­bles ven­dor who has been re­peat­ed­ly tar­get­ed by crim­i­nals is call­ing for eas­i­er ac­cess to Firearm Users Li­cences (FULs) for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to de­fend them­selves.

Ramesh Thack­o­ordeen, who op­er­ates the Out­ties Dou­bles stand along the M2 Tasker Road with his fam­i­ly, said the busi­ness has been robbed at least five times in re­cent years.

The lat­est at­tack oc­curred on Tues­day at about 6.50 pm, as Thack­o­ordeen’s broth­er and three work­ers were clos­ing the stall. They were re­port­ed­ly ac­cost­ed by five masked men dressed in dark cloth­ing, who an­nounced a rob­bery and or­dered the vic­tims to lie on the ground.

Dur­ing the or­deal, two of the vic­tims were beat­en. The ban­dits es­caped with cash, wal­lets, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, jew­ellery, two cell phones and Thack­o­ordeen’s broth­er’s white Nis­san Navara.

De­spite the trau­mat­ic in­ci­dent, Thack­o­ordeen re­opened the busi­ness the fol­low­ing day, not­ing that it is their fam­i­ly’s on­ly source of in­come. How­ev­er, he said it is in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to earn an hon­est liv­ing while fac­ing con­stant threats from crim­i­nals.

“Every­body try­ing to live, every­body try­ing to make their mon­ey hon­est, and every­body should have a lit­tle re­spect for that,” he said.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that po­lice can­not be present at all times, Thack­o­ordeen be­lieves in­creased pa­trols would help de­ter crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. He al­so ar­gued that al­low­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens eas­i­er ac­cess to FULs could pro­vide an ad­di­tion­al lay­er of pro­tec­tion.

“The most they could do is make sure every­body has a firearm to pro­tect them­selves. I feel that is the best way, be­cause it steady hap­pen­ing and they not go­ing to stop. When they go to jail, they get bail and come back out again. It will just be the same thing over and over,” he said.

He added that his fam­i­ly had con­sid­ered ap­ply­ing for a firearm li­cence but re­mains un­cer­tain about the process.

Thack­o­ordeen not­ed that their work­day some­times be­gins as ear­ly as 3 am, and in ad­di­tion to los­ing hard-earned in­come dur­ing rob­beries, vic­tims are of­ten phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed.

Po­lice lat­er con­firmed that the stolen van was used in an­oth­er rob­bery tar­get­ing a dou­bles ven­dor in Preysal, and four sus­pects have since been ar­rest­ed.

Last month, stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion came in­to ef­fect. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, while in op­po­si­tion, had en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to de­fend them­selves against crim­i­nals.

Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Ste Madeleine rob­bery are on­go­ing.