Two armed men shot and injured a couple in Friendship, East Coast Demerara on Friday evening and held some residents in the East Coast Demerara community under siege for a brief period before escaping into the night firing bullets in the air.
A police press release issued yesterday, identified the couple as Brian Chester, 37, and his reputed wife Dionne Glasgow, both of Lot 144 Brush Dam, Friendship.
The release said that the two armed men were identified as Shawn Brown, one of the five prisoners who escaped from the Georgetown Prisons on February 23 and Compton Cambridge, also of Brush Dam, who is wanted in connection with a series of robberies.
Chester’s mother, Edris Chester, who also lives at Lot 144 Brush Dam in the top flat of the two-storey building, told Stabroek News that she was on her way home from a meeting at about 9:30 pm and stopped at her daughter’s home/shop at the corner of the Railway Embankment Road and Friendship Main Road. When she was about to enter the yard, she saw her son “swinging the corner on his motorbike.”
Soon after he stopped on the road outside the shop, she said, she noticed three men approaching him. In a flash, the mother said, one of them pointed in his direction and she heard a gunshot, followed by a series of other gunshots. After that, she said, she became disoriented and could not say what else occurred.
Eyewitnesses told Stabroek News that when the bullets rang out Brian Chester was hit but he ran towards the Friendship Public Road and escaped. The police said that he was shot in the right leg and head. His motorcycle was hit and he abandoned it and ran.
Edris Chester said that after someone said that Brian had been shot, Glasgow, his wife, ran to the fence and was shot in the right leg just below the knee during a hail of gunfire. She could not say who took the couple to the hospital, but the police release said that they were both treated at the hospital and sent away. Edris Chester said that she had made a report about the shooting at the police station.
According to residents in the area, the men then made their way to Brush Dam where they sprayed the bottom flat of the Chesters’ home with bullets scaring everyone, including children, in the top flat. Brian Chester lives in the bottom flat.
When Stabroek News visited the scene, it was noted that the louvre windows on the bottom flat had been damaged and there were many indentations in the concrete wall where the bullets hit.
After shooting at the house, the men returned to the Embankment Road and went west, firing shots in the air. No one could say if the men had a vehicle waiting for them or whether they went into the backdam in the area.
In spite of the heavy shooting which took place, up to noon yesterday when Stabroek News visited the area, the police had not yet gone to either Brush Dam or the shop at the corner of Friendship Main Road and the Railway Embankment Road, residents said. They expressed concern at this. They were also worried that the men might have returned last night and there was no police presence.
They said that while one of the men was easily identifiable, no one was certain that the second was Brown though the general description could fit.
Yesterday, more roads including the Friendship Road had been dug up, making several parts of the community inaccessible by vehicle.