Bandits beat boy for Play Whe winnings
By Cecily Asson Monday, August 23 2010 Newsday
A nine-year-old Morne Diablo schoolboy was planassed (beaten with flat side of cutlass) several times during a robbery at his grandmother’s home on Saturday night after he refused to tell them where he hid $540 his grandmother won in Play Whe earlier that day.
The bandits, relatives said, also wanted to know where the boy hid $480 another relative had left with his grandmother for safe keeping.
In what they described yesterday as a reign of terror by four armed and masked men, who stormed the house demanding money from Zion Ellis, nine, of Quarry Road, Morne Diablo, Penal. Zion was planassed several times about the body — his cousin Boysie Jacob, 29, was stabbed five times in the back and neck and is now warded in serious condition at the San Fernando General Hospital. He suffered a punctured lung, a relative said.
Zion’s ailing grandmother, Marlene Cooper, 45, was beaten in the chest with a standing fan when she failed to co-operate with the bandits. The bandits ransacked the three-bedroom house in search of the money. Relatives said they found it hidden in a jacket pocket.
A police report stated at about 11.45 pm on Saturday four masked men armed with cutlasses went to Cooper’s house at Quarry Street where they kicked down the front bedroom door and demanded money. The men grabbed the boy off his bed and began beating him when he refused to talk. Jacob and Cooper were awakened by the noise. Police said a struggle ensued between Jacob and the bandits and he was stabbed. Cooper was struck in the chest when she intervened. The bandits ransacked the house before escaping through a back door and into a waiting vehicle. They escaped with $1,020 cash, silver coins, cigarettes and a piece of cheese. A report was made to the Penal Police Station and officers have since held a suspect believed to be the driver of the getaway car. A black Wingroad vehicle has been impounded. Police say they are searching for four suspects who are known to the family.
When Newsday visited the family yesterday, the steps leading to the house, the wooden gallery floor, and the floor length curtain were all stained with blood. The sheet on Jacob’s bed was also covered in blood.
Several louvre panes were smashed during the struggle between Jacob and the bandits.
Katisha Ellis, 29, who lives next door to her mother told Newsday that her son has not been himself since the experience. Ellis’s head, back and arms bore slight bruises from the beating.
She said the men knew that they had money in the house and that Zion was the one who secured the money for his grandmother.
She said, “To know that these fellas lime here — eat and drink here that do this to my son, it real hard. They real planasse the boy because he wouldn’t tell them where the money is.”
