RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Res­i­dents of Debe have been grap­pling with a se­ries of rob­beries and home in­va­sions in re­cent times, with the lat­est tak­ing place in the ear­ly hours of Mon­day morn­ing, along Debe Trace.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say around 2:45 am, three masked as­sailants forcibly opened a win­dow of a res­i­dence and en­tered the liv­ing room. The tar­get­ed house be­longs to Mol­ly De­ok­i­nanan, 77, who is al­so the pro­pri­etor of the well-known Check­ers Ser­vice Sta­tion, sit­u­at­ed at Debe Trace.

Re­count­ing her ter­ri­fy­ing or­deal to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, De­ok­i­nanan said she was at home with Anand Lakhan, aged 58, when they were abrupt­ly awok­en by a loud noise.

De­ok­i­nanan in­ves­ti­gat­ed, on­ly to be con­front­ed by the in­trud­ers, who were wear­ing dark-coloured cloth­ing hats, and masks.

One of the rob­bers swift­ly seized De­ok­i­nanan's prized pos­ses­sion—a gold Be­ra val­ued at $1,000, along with an iPhone 7 worth $2,000, and the keys to her busi­ness es­tab­lish­ment. They then grabbed a black wal­let con­tain­ing $2,100 in cash, two gold rings val­ued at $5,000, and three watch­es from her night­stand be­fore mak­ing their es­cape through a win­dow on the north­ern side of the house.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent, De­ok­i­nanan con­tact­ed the po­lice, and a team of of­fi­cers led by Cpl Dhu­ram vis­it­ed. With the as­sis­tance of WPC Har­riper­sad and WPC Charles, they lift­ed sev­er­al fin­ger­prints from the crime scene and ob­tained cru­cial footage from the prop­er­ty's CCTV sys­tem.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said ar­rests are im­mi­nent.

Over the past year, sev­er­al home in­va­sions have oc­curred, and res­i­dents have been tak­ing ad­di­tion­al pre­cau­tions such as cam­era in­stal­la­tions, guard dogs and com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols. There al­so has been the es­tab­lish­ment of com­mu­ni­ty watch groups.

Any­one with in­for­ma­tion on the bur­glary can con­tact Crime Stop­pers at 800-TIPS.