Businessman Rawle Kurban said he saw death when he felt the blade of a bandit’s cutlass during a robbery at his Ste Madeleine restaurant and bar yesterday morning. If not for his son, Travis, who rushed out from a stockroom to help, Kurban, 52, of Manahambre Road, might not have been able to recall the experience.
“That was real dread because there was no warning. They just started to hit me and they could have killed me. I was seeing death because it was a cutlass coming down on my head so I was scared for my life. “All I could have done was ‘brakes’. I could not do anything else at the moment. I could not even think,” Kurban said. Reports stated that around 1.15 am Kurban was at his Train Stop Restaurant and Bar when two men, one armed with a gun and the other with a cutlass, snuck behind him.
One of the men fired several chops, cutting his right and left arms and shoulder and hit him a severe blow to the head with the blunt side of the cutlass. CCTV cameras at the bar captured the incident and showed the men grabbing Kurban’s bag containing cigarettes and cash. After Travis ran out, the men ran to the road and escaped in black Nissan Almera registered, PCA 4744. At the bar yesterday, Kurban said they were already closed when the men walked in the bar asking for cigarettes and $100.
Suspecting they were bandits, he told them he had no money but gave them the cigarettes for free. Within minutes, he said the men returned and first struck him on his head. “When I turned around it was the same two fellahs and they kept on plannasing me with the cutlass. “They just grabbed the bag from my shoulder containing my day’s sale and my cigarettes. When they ran, we ran behind them.
“They ran down the road and they had a car parked on the side street after the bridge and they just sped off,” Kurban said. He said yesterday’s sales has been slow as people were talking about the robbery and were fearful for their safety at the bar. However, he said the only reason the bandits got into the business place was because the door was left open while the cleaner worked in the car park.
He said he had cameras inside and outside the premises which captured the entire incident, even showing a tattoo on one of the men’s hand. PC Benjamin of the Ste Madeleine Police Station is continuing investigations.