Senior Reporter
sascha.wilson@guardian.co.tt
A 42-year-old Penal housewife is recalling the trauma she endured when three bandits stormed her home yesterday morning, forcing her to beg them to spare her life and the lives of her two daughters, aged 18 and five.
Still trembling from the ordeal during an interview in front of the Penal Rock Road Health Facility hours later, Sherry Dowlat lamented, “It was so frightening. I’m still shaking. Thank God, they did not shoot us.”
She said that after she moved her vehicle for her husband to leave for work around 5.10 am and was about to return inside the house, she was confronted by three assailants—one armed with a firearm. They demanded the car key.
She said her 18-year-old and five-year-old daughters were asleep at the time.
“My daughter heard the commotion and asked what was going on. By then, they done hold me down. When I scream out, that is how my daughter was alerted and come out,” she recounted.
Dowlat said one of the men grabbed her elder daughter in a chokehold, covered her mouth, carried her back into her room, and slammed her onto the bed. The bandits then began ransacking the house.
“They tell me don’t scream, just tell them where the money and jewellery is. One of them point a gun,” she said. The intruders bound her and her daughter’s hands and feet with duct tape.
Fearing for their lives, Dowlat eventually told them her husband’s safe was under their bed, although she did not know the combination. “I tell them just take that and go, spare we life,” she said.
She believes the men were tracking her husband’s movements, as one of them was speaking to an accomplice over the phone who appeared to be giving information about his location.
Oblivious to the chaos, her five-year-old daughter came out of her room, sat on a chair, pulled a blanket over herself, and even waved to one of the suspects, who then duct-taped her hands.
After the suspects fled in the family’s Aqua vehicle, Dowlat’s younger daughter managed to free herself and untie the others. Her 15-year-old son, who was asleep in another room separate from the main house, was unharmed.
Dowlat said the family is now afraid to remain in the home where they had lived peacefully for two decades. “They say if they don’t get jewellery and money in the safe, they will shoot us,” she said tearfully.
The bandits escaped with thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery, the DVR system, over TT$2,000, and US$600.
While the Government is working to implement legislation to address home invasions, Dowlat—a constituent of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar—said she is not convinced that crime is decreasing in the country.
