Bandits fire shots but

THREE GUNMEN fired several shots at a prominent San Fernando doctor after he caught them attempting to break into his house through a kitchen window yesterday morning.

Luckily, Dr Steven Ramroop, head of the emergency department at the San Fernando General Hospital, was not injured and was able to scare off the bandits from entering his sprawling home in a posh residential area at SS Erin Road, Phillipine.

Although shaken by the incident, Ramroop was yesterday counting his lucky stars that the bandits were not able to enter his house, where he lived with his wife and three children. In the bandits’ hasty retreat they left behind a bolt cutter, which they used to cut the burglar proofing, a pig foot and other house-breaking implements, police said. Recalling the incident, Ramroop told Newsday that about 1.45 am yesterday he had just finished watching a movie in his bedroom and switched off the television.

He said he heard a strange noise as though someone was bending steel. “As I approached the kitchen I saw the shadows of three persons,” he said.

“I hid behind a pillar and I shout hello... what the hell is going on there. One of them say police,” Ramroop said. The doctor said he shouted to his wife, Joanne, to call the police. He said he saw a glimpse of the men who were trying to crawl through the window from the outside of the house. The bandits, he said, then opened fire at him but missed.

However, the bullets smashed one of the windows and damaged the cupboards, he said. As the bandits ran off one of them fell in the drain, they then escaped through an emergency exit near the swimming pool in the yard.

Ramroop said the police responded immediately but the bandits escaped before they arrived. Saying that his family was traumatised by the incident, he said that he intends to hire a private security guard to secure his premises. The doctor said he believed that the bandits had conducted a stake out of his house for some time and had planned to terrorise and rob him and his family.

“My wife heard the dog barking in the bushes by the pool a few days ago, so they had been scoping the house,” he said.

Recalling an incident two months ago where Magistrate Sonia Aleong and her family were robbed at their Palmiste home, he said it was obvious that no one was safe.

The doctor said the sad thing about this situation was that he has to treat and in some cases save the lives of persons who commit these criminal acts. San Fernando CID detectives are continuing investigations.