Bandits turn back to kill taxi driver

TAXI DRIVER Chaitram Ramlogan believed he and his passengers had escaped two gunmen who held them up Monday night in Chaguanas, but the gunmen turned back and shot him dead. Describing the murder as occurring in the most tragic of circumstances, police said Ramlogan stood on the road begging for help when the gunmen reversed the taxi they stole from him, then shot him in the back. The taxi driver’s killing sent the murder rate in just three months and a week of this year soaring to 87. Ramlogan was the father of a handicapped five-year-old boy, and when Newsday visited the family’s Dow Village home in California yesterday, relatives said Anthony, who is ill with cerebral palsy, kept asking: “Where daddy; daddy gone to work.”

According to a police report, Ramlogan, who plied the Short/St Mary’s route between 7 pm and 8 pm, was taking four passengers in his white B12 Nissan Sentra south along the Old Southern Main Road in Edinburgh Village, Chaguanas. The report stated that on reaching Families for Jesus Ministries, two passengers, one armed with a gun, ordered him to pull over to the side of the road. Ramlogan and the two other passengers, one of them a member of the Coast Guard, were ordered out of the vehicle. The report stated that the gunmen ordered the suspects to run towards the northbound lane of the Solomon Hochoy Highway.

Police said Ramlogan made a dash towards the highway, but turned around as the bandits sped off, and ran back to the Old Southern Main Road. Preliminary investigations revealed that Ramlogan flagged down a passing vehicle, but the gunmen spotted Ramlogan through their rear-view mirror. Police said the men reversed quickly and as one of the gunmen got out of the car, he shouted: “Take that.” Police believe Ramlogan’s back was turned towards the gunman when he was shot.

A man who witnessed the incident told Newsday: “The taxi driver and two passengers were told to get out of the car and run towards the highway. While they were running away, one of the bandits jumped into the driver’s side, while the other sat in the front passenger seat. They drove off.” He added: “However, when the bandits noticed that Ramlogan had turned back and was talking to someone, asking them for help, they reversed the car with full speed. The other bandit shot him in the back. I hear him say ‘Take dat.’” Newsday was told that Ramlogan lay on the side of the road for about 45 minutes before an emergency ambulance took him to the nearby Chaguanas Health Facility. Police found Ramlogan’s car in a canefield at Roopsingh Road in Carapichaima yesterday morning.

Ramlogan was held up last week by bandits who had bundled him into the trunk of the same Nissan car. He was taken to a lonely area in Carlsen Field where the car was stripped of its tyres, rims and music. Ramlogan was not harmed in that attack. His son Anthony sat on a table yesterday anxiously awaiting his father’s return from work. The cerebral palsy has impaired his muscles resulting in paralysis. The medical condition results from brain damage before or after birth.

“The child, normally talkative, was only crying for his daddy to come home last night. This morning he just went silent. He not talking, but when we ask him where is daddy, he answering, ‘He gone to work and coming back just now,”’ Ramlogan’s sister, Sherry Ann, said. Ramlogan’s wife, Shamilla, 23, said her husband was one of thousands of Caroni (1975) Ltd workers who took VSEP and supplemented the family’s income by plying his taxi. Ramlogan will be cremated today at the Waterloo Cremation Site.