Latest update May 1st, 2024 1:04 AM
Sep 12, 2016 News
By: Romila Boodram
Waking up to the sound of gunshots back in 2004 was nothing new for Rajpaul Sookra and his family.
After all, it was 2004, when the ‘crime wave’ was at its peak, and the family was also living on the East Coast of Demerara where most of the atrocities were happening.
But on the night of August 28, it was not the sound of gun fire that woke Sookra, but the continuous barking of his dogs.
When a scared but curious Sookra peeped out of one of the windows of the Coldingen, East Coast Demerara (ECD) home, he shared with his two sons, Basil and Ryan, his wife, Angela and nine-year-old daughter, Christine, he saw something that sent tremors of fear down his spine.
A man, dressed in black, and holding what appeared to be a gun, stood in front of his gate.
With very little time to think, Sookra, called ‘Paulie’, quickly woke his two sons, and a nephew and niece who were spending some time at his home, and dragged them into the front room with his wife and daughter.
In an interview yesterday, Sookra, who would be speaking about this horrifying night for the first time after 12 years, said:
“I wake them up and tell them to come to the front room- thinking that it would be more secure but at the time I was not thinking that it would have been more secure in the back room.”
Fighting back tears, Sookra, who was a contractor back then, said that shortly after, gunshots erupted as the gunman and four accomplices began to riddle the house with bullets.
“They just shooting and shooting for a whole 45 minutes. All you hearing is gunshots after gunshots,” he recalled while adding that the gunmen were cursing for them to open their door, after failing to smash it open.
“What happened is that all my doors opened from inside-out so if you kick in the door (from outside), it would not open. My house was grilled all around so it wasn’t easy for them to break the door to get in,” Sookra said.
Twenty minutes passed and the sounds of gunshots echoed everywhere. The village was not so populated back then and houses were located a distance from each other so the chances of getting rescued were minimal.
At that time, the only thing that Sookra believed could have saved his family was when the men ran short of ammunition, but the gunfire appeared to go on forever.
“At one time, I wanted to surrender because they were shooting and shooting and at the same time they were cursing for us to open the door and I didn’t know what to do because the position they were shooting at, bullets coming into the room from all direction,” the man recounted.
During this time, he and his family were crammed in a corner of the bedroom. His wife was terrified while the five children were forcing themselves not to make any sounds as they wept uncontrollably.
By this time, the gunmen had figured that they were hiding in the front room and drilled the bedroom floor with bullets, which passed through the bed and ended up in the ceiling.
Sookra’s front room is located opposite a window with a step situated just next to it—the men used this to their advantage and pushed their guns through the louvers and fired indiscriminately.
While it still happens now, in those days getting help from the police was always an issue. For this particular case, Sookra said that during the gunfire, with shaking fingers, he managed to call a relative and requested that they call the police.
However, when that relative contacted the station, the ranks informed them that they did not know where Coldingen was located.
Meanwhile, at Sookra’s home, the gunfire ceased.
Nine-year-old Christine probably thought the gunmen had left.
She stood.
Before the parents could have pulled her back down to the floor, it was too late.
One of the gunmen fired. A bullet tore off the left side of Chrstine’s skull, spilling blood on everyone hiding in the room.
“Imagine, all ah we hiding in the corner and the bullets pass all ah we and kill she,” the father had said during an interview back in 2004.
The child was pronounced dead at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. His eldest son, Basil sustained a gunshot wound to his hand.
After failing to enter Sookra’s home, the men robbed three other residents in Coldingen that night.
A few days after the shooting, a Buxton, ECD, resident, Kelvin Nero was shot dead during a confrontation with ranks from the Guyana Police Force.
The police said that Nero was the prime suspect in the murder of Malika Archer, who was a witness in another murder case. They also implicated him in the senseless killing of nine-year-old Christine.
They believed that Nero used a car he and his accomplices had hijacked a day before the little girl’s death to carry out the robbery spree.
Meanwhile, dealing with the death of Christine was not easy for her family.
After the tragedy, Sookra’s wife distanced herself from the family and would be home all day, grieving.
“I would be at work and the two boys would be at school and she (Angela) would be at home all the time. Before Christine died, my wife had a stroke and she got worse after the child died,” Sookra said.
Because of the state of his wife, with the suggestions of relatives, he opened a little shop for his wife to sell to avoid her being alone.
While it helped a little, his wife could not overcome the death of her daughter.
She eventually passed away on August 24, 2015.
“After she died, some relatives come to clean the house and they found a bag with Christine hair clips that she (the mother) was keeping and no one had any idea about this. I tried to go through it but it was too difficult, I had to discard it.”
Mr. Sookra now lives at the same house with his two sons and he operates the shop he had constructed for his wife.
THEM PIMPING OUT GUYANA.
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