Witnesses recount shooting of taxi driver

Antigua:  Taxi driver Wilburn Lewis, who drove to hospital after being shot in the right thigh in the pre-dawn hours yesterday underwent emergency surgery and was in stable condition at press time.

That’s according to reports from the customer to whom he was delivering bread at the time he was shot during an attempted robbery in Golden Grove.

Witnesses said they heard a commotion coming from outside a home along a dirt road across from the Christian Union Mission Church in Golden Grove and were stunned at what happened next.

“There was a man in a dark hooded shirt with a mask, and he was shouting ‘gimme de money, gimme de money’ at the other guy standing on the gallery. The man said he didn’t have any money and he threw two phones at the guy with the gun. The guy ask fuh de man car key and hold up de gun and start to fire shots and then he run away,” a resident of the area said.

All the while, the witness said, the occupants of the house where the incident unfolded, were inside.

A woman who was inside the house waiting for Lewis to deliver the bread, said she heard two shots ring out at about 4:30 am – explosions she said she couldn’t get out of head.

The witness, who wished to remain anonymous, said the incident has frightened her and her two teenage children and expressed disgust over being put on hold for about two minutes on both occasions she called 911 to report the incident as it occurred outside her home.“The two bullets pierced through the house. One went right through the bedroom door and another shattered a vase I had in the living room,” she said. “We could have been hurt, only God saved us.”

The woman said her 19-year-old daughter was so shaken she could not go to work yesterday, and spent most of the day crying. The woman’s 16-year-old son went to school but he too, she said, was still afraid when he returned home in the afternoon.

Late last night, the family was considering options of finding some place else to sleep, for fear the armed bandit would return.

Meantime, after the shooter fled, the injured driver of TX 1408, rushed back to his taxi and drove to Mount St John’s Medical Centre.

A trail of blood was seen on the ground leading from where Lewis parked the taxi straight into the Casualty Unit where nurses met him.

On the front passenger seat, laid several loaves of bread he was set to deliver yesterday.

Police are probing the incident and have appealed for assistance in solving the crime. Persons can call 462-3913/4 or CrimeStoppers at 800 TIPS (8477).