Annandale woman packs her bags
-after Tuesday's attack on her home
Stabroek News
October 31, 2002
Paula McAdam, the woman who was forced to flee her home at Annandale, East Coast Demerara on Tuesday, returned yesterday under police protection, but only to collect some items.
The woman, a director attached to the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority, told Stabroek News that no further damage was done to her home. She was forced to flee on Tuesday after shots were fired and a grenade was lobbed at her house.
According to McAdam, the explosion shattered some of her windowpanes and caused her pipelines to burst.
One of the bullets "came through one of the windows, passed through a bedroom wall and through the roof," she said.
Preceding the attack, gunmen had opened fire on a motor car in which one of her sons and a nephew were travelling from the city. McAdam had asked the young men to visit her to assist in carrying out some work on the house. The men uplifted the car from her daughter who works at a city bank and while traveling to Annandale, noticed that a burgundy car was trailing them.
The woman surmised that the occupants of the burgundy car might have felt that the young men had just completed a transaction at the bank and were a target for a robbery.
She said she heard gunshots moments before her son and nephew hurriedly drove up and said they were being attacked. The car bore several bullet holes.
By late evening, army and police ranks had surrounded and searched her home twice after villagers kept insisting that someone had fired shots from within the house and that weapons were being stored in the basement. The woman has since denied these claims. The two young men were taken into custody and subsequently released.
McAdam recently built the house and had been living there for about one year.