Bruised and bat­tered af­ter be­ing at­tacked dur­ing a har­row­ing home in­va­sion in­volv­ing five gun­men, for­mer UNC sen­a­tor and an­i­mal ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza ex­pressed sad­ness at the state of T&T, say­ing she felt numb from the ex­pe­ri­ence.

De­spite show­ing vis­i­ble signs of the at­tack, which oc­curred around 7.25 pm on Wednes­day, De Souza still went to her busi­ness place, Hair by Jow­elle, at In­de­pen­dence Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, to con­sole her em­ploy­ees, many of whom cried up­on hear­ing of her or­deal.

While po­lice stepped up the man­hunt for the as­sailants, De Souza said she felt both dis­traught and de­ter­mined to over­come her ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I’ve weath­ered many storms be­fore, and I will come out of this bet­ter and more re­silient. I will bounce back and con­tin­ue to help search for these peo­ple,” she said, even as tears glis­tened in her eyes.

“I just want to go in­to my house, crawl in­to my room, and wish that I nev­er come back out of that house.”

De Souza said the gun­men came to her Mead­ow Dri­ve, Palmiste home and en­tered through an un­locked door on the north­ern side of the prop­er­ty. One of the ban­dits, de­scribed as 5 feet 3 inch­es tall, with a dark com­plex­ion and slim build, wear­ing a red T-shirt and black three-quar­ter jeans, was hold­ing a gun. They as­sault­ed De Souza be­fore bind­ing her hands and feet with tie straps. The as­sailants then pro­ceed­ed to ran­sack the premis­es. They stole a safe con­tain­ing doc­u­ments, as well as an ar­ray of lux­u­ry items, in­clud­ing Louis Vuit­ton hand­bags and two Ap­ple iPads.

The to­tal val­ue of the stolen items is yet to be as­cer­tained. De Souza said she had not yet tab­u­lat­ed what was stolen from the house.

 “They took my safe, which had all my doc­u­ments, my will, and oth­er items.” Say­ing she hoped the per­pe­tra­tors could be caught, De Souza added, “I leave this all in the hands of who­ev­er could solve it. It re­al­ly is tak­ing a toll on me, but I’ve come back from worse than this. Let’s hope they cap­ture these peo­ple.”

De Souza, the vice pres­i­dent of An­i­mals Alive, has spent her life res­cu­ing stray dogs around the coun­try. She is al­so a phil­an­thropist who sup­ports sev­er­al char­i­ties and gives free train­ing at her sa­lon in San Fer­nan­do.

The or­deal has sent shock waves through the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, with res­i­dents ex­press­ing con­cern over the brazen na­ture of the at­tack. Po­lice said height­ened se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures are be­ing im­ple­ment­ed in the area to pre­vent any fur­ther in­ci­dents.

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