Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

An­gry vil­lagers, en­raged by the chop­ping and ter­ror­is­ing of a Pe­nal fam­i­ly, cor­nered two rob­bers and beat one of them to death on Thurs­day, af­ter run­ning him over with a car. Ke­ston Con­tera, 26, of Princes Town, died af­ter be­ing beat­en with his own cut­lass, which he and an ac­com­plice re­port­ed­ly used to ter­rorise Roger Ho­sein, 24, his com­mon-law wife, Nisha Ali, 28, and Ali's two chil­dren, Kevin Alexan­der, aged 11 and four-year-old Kate­lyn Alexan­der. The rob­bery oc­curred around 4.45 pm on Thurs­day at 33 Old Clarke Road, Pe­nal.

Ho­sein, a fish ven­dor, was sleep­ing on the so­fa when Ali walked through the door. Po­lice said the two thieves, who were un­masked, fol­lowed her in­side, placed a cut­lass to her throat and de­mand­ed cash and jew­el­ry. Ali screamed and Ho­sein awoke. He rushed to Ali's de­fence but was chopped across the face. The blow sev­ered part of his ear and split open his nose. He col­lapsed un­con­scious. The thieves left Ho­sein on the floor and dragged Ali to her bed­room where they forced her to hand over cash and jew­el­ry. Ali's moth­er. An­gela, said: "My child was shak­ing like a leaf. She gave them all the mon­ey she had but they want­ed more.

"They then choke up my in­no­cent grand­son. They said they will kill him. They kept ask­ing him where his moth­er have the rest of the mon­ey." She said the rob­bers beat Ali mer­ci­less­ly. "They threat­ened to kill my four-year-old grand- daugh­ter. My daugh­ter had to brace the blows and she begged them. She begged them not to hurt the chil­dren. My daugh­ter thought that Roger was dead," An­gela said, clutch­ing a blood-soaked tow­el. Af­ter tak­ing an undis­closed sum of cash and jew­el­ry, the rob­bers fled up Old Clarke Road. How­ev­er, a vil­lager ran them over with his car. Oth­er vil­lagers caught up with the thieves and be­gan beat­ing them.

The rob­bers were tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where Con­tera was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

The dri­ver of the car was ques­tioned by po­lice. He told of­fi­cers he was act­ing in self-de­fence as the rob­bers tried to hi­jack his ve­hi­cle. An­gela said para­medics re­fused to take Ho­sein to the hos­pi­tal un­til po­lice ar­rived at the scene. Last night, vil­lagers called on po­lice to re­lease their neigh­bour, say­ing he had done noth­ing wrong.

They hailed him as a hero of the com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing if it was not for their ac­tions, the thieves would have es­caped and would have robbed oth­er fam­i­lies. Sgt Siew of the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice Sta­tion is con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.