Carisa Lee

An 80-year-old busi­ness­man who was beat­en by ban­dits, who then robbed his fam­i­ly up­stairs Woo Ling’s Su­per­mar­ket along the West­ern Main Road in St James last Fri­day, is now com­fort­ably re­cov­er­ing at home.

“It was a hard pill to swal­low and we are all in the role of re­tail busi­ness, so we ex­pect the worst but be­ing in­vad­ed in your own premis­es is to­tal­ly unimag­in­able,” he said yes­ter­day.

His con­di­tion was re­vealed by his nephew and own­er of the su­per­mar­ket, Brent Woo Ling, who told Guardian Me­dia that in the 60 years they have been in St James, they have nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced any­thing like this.

“We have nev­er, ever, ever, ever, which makes it worse... my un­cle was beat­en, tied up, and robbed,” Woo Ling said.

Dur­ing the ear­ly hours of last Fri­day, Woo Ling said a group of armed men en­tered his premis­es and robbed them in their home up­stairs the su­per­mar­ket, which was closed at the time.

He did not want to re­veal how much mon­ey they lost but said the ban­dits al­so took their sur­veil­lance equip­ment, which made him be­lieve that the ban­dits were mon­i­tor­ing them for some time now.

No ar­rests have been made but po­lice from the West End Di­vi­sion told Guardian Me­dia the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the rob­bery is on­go­ing and they had al­ready tak­en state­ments from the vic­tims.

“They (the po­lice) are in con­tact,” Woo Lin said yes­ter­day.

Woo Ling said he had noth­ing to say to the men who car­ried out the at­tack on his fam­i­ly.

How­ev­er, he said the or­deal was enough to cause them to re­tire from op­er­at­ing their busi­ness soon. They will now seek to find a buy­er for the su­per­mar­ket so that their 60-plus lega­cy of of­fer­ing ser­vice to the peo­ple of St James will be car­ried on.

“What­ev­er God’s plan, we will have to ac­cept, we are not re­al­ly clos­ing down at the mo­ment but who­ev­er the next own­er, we hope that they con­tin­ue this line of busi­ness,” Woo Ling said.

He said the spot is an icon­ic one. In a Face­book, post shar­ing the in­ci­dent, Woo Lin al­so asked those who may be in­ter­est­ed in ex­pand­ing their busi­ness to St James to reach out to him pri­vate­ly.

“We con­tin­ue to ask God’s pro­tec­tion for every­one’s safe­ty as we jour­ney through these per­ilous times while try­ing to make an hon­est liv­ing,” he added.