(Trinidad Express) Grandmother Haniffa Bedassie operated a mini mart in her Chaguanas community for over two decades without ever being robbed, until yesterday.
The criminal took not only her valuables, but her life.
She died in the apartment adjoining her shop. Bedassie, 54, is believed to have suffocated on a piece of clothing stuffed into her mouth by the thief to silence her. The thief was shot in the compound of a nearby church by patrolling police officers. He died at hospital.
Relatives of Bedassie said that they knew the thief because he grew up in the community and his mother ran a sewing business on the same compound.
Bedassie, 54, a mother of two, and grandmother of two, was attacked midmorning in her minimart.
She ran to the back where her apartment is located where she was cornered by the thief.
He tied her hands and feet on the floor of her apartment and muzzled her with a piece of clothing.
“This was the first time that she got robbed here. I found it strange that someone who had been renting there would come back and rob her. It is really unfortunate that he killed her”, said her relative, Deena-lee Siew.
“The neighbours were not seeing her and they went to look for her. They were banging down the door.
But the bandit was still there. When the people left he ran out through the back. Her son came and found her and started to bawl. The pastor of the church right next door stopped the police and told them that a man with a back pack was running down the road. The police shot him. They shot him in the church compound, the Redemption Worship Centre”, said Siew.
The thief is yet to be identified, police said.
