An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Days af­ter four armed ban­dits held a Cunu­pia fam­i­ly hostage at gun­point in their home for 23 min­utes and ter­rorised them, de­mand­ing cash and valu­ables, the fam­i­ly is now con­tem­plat­ing leav­ing this coun­try for good.

The fam­i­ly of four, who did not want their names and any iden­ti­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion about them pub­lished, told Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, “Those 23 min­utes felt like three hours.”

One mem­ber of the fam­i­ly re­called, “They had us down on the ground while they ran­sacked the house, de­mand­ing where the mon­ey and gold were. And ever so of­ten, they would come and cock the gun by our heads to fright­en us.”

Fight­ing back tears and show­ing pal­pa­ble fear every time a car drove past the house, the trau­ma­tised fam­i­ly said the ter­ror grew af­ter one of the sus­pects told them they would take the young fe­male to be traf­ficked to Venezuela if they didn’t hand over what they want­ed.

With her voice break­ing and eyes full of tears, one of the fe­males point­ed to the wilt­ed bou­quet of flow­ers atop a wood­en hutch in the liv­ing room, which was pre­sent­ed to her up­on her re­tire­ment two weeks ago, and said, “We have a mod­est home. We have worked hard over the years for what we have.”

Po­lice said around 6.15 am last Fri­day, four armed men broke in­to the fam­i­ly’s home when one of the oc­cu­pants opened the front door. They then made their way in and forced the fam­i­ly of four, which in­clud­ed two re­tirees, to lie on the floor and tied their hands.
The ban­dits ran­sacked the house and made off with sev­er­al items, in­clud­ing cash.

Af­ter they fled, the fam­i­ly con­tact­ed po­lice.
Two of­fi­cers on pa­trol in­ter­cept­ed the get­away ve­hi­cle at 8 am. Of­fi­cers de­tained the dri­ver and found items of ev­i­den­tial val­ue in the ve­hi­cle. A woman who lat­er ar­rived at the Cunu­pia Po­lice Sta­tion and iden­ti­fied her­self as a rel­a­tive of the sus­pect was al­so held for ques­tion­ing.

On Sun­day, the fam­i­ly was slow­ly putting their home back to­geth­er, but re­mained shocked and dazed. One of the men said they had been liv­ing in con­stant fear since the in­ci­dent.

“They were here on the premis­es since 3 am that day, but they couldn’t ac­cess the house, so they wait­ed un­til we opened the front door to get in,” he said.

The sus­pects re­port­ed­ly spent three hours roam­ing the prop­er­ty and pounced at 6 am as a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly opened the door to leave for work.

Al­though they wel­comed news that a man and woman have since been held in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent, they are still ter­ri­fied as the oth­er sus­pects re­main on the loose.