Vice-Chairman of Harbour Bridge Board living in fear after break-ins
– no response by police despite reports
Following two break-ins at his Ozama Street, North Ruimveldt home, including one that saw put up a fight with an intruder who was armed with an ice pick, ViceChairman of Demerara Harbour Bridge Board Joseph Holder is now living in fear.
Holder, 80, told Stabroek News yesterday that the pre-dawn break-ins occurred on Tuesday and Thursday and although reports were made to the police, they are yet to visit.
Holder, who lives at the property with his wife, related that on the first occasion, Tuesday around 4.30 am, he was about to head into bed when he noticed his front windows opened and items around the upper flat of the home rearranged. That was when he realized that someone had been in the home.
On that occasion, Holder informed, the intruder took away foreign currency that was in his wallet in the bedroom. He said that later the same he made a report to the police, but they never came to his premises.
Then on Thursday at 3.45 am, he was awakened by his wife telling him that a man was trying to gain entry to their bedroom through a window. “Startled, I got up from out of the bed. By this time, he had entered the room and crossed the bed to the other side where my wife was,” Holder explained.
The engineer said his wife was trying to reach for a small axe, which she kept in the wardrobe, but the intruder pulled her away and pushed her onto the bed.
Holder said that without fear he approached the man and put him in a “hold” like the ones he saw in fight scenes on the television. “He kept me off of him by firing punches and kicks to my body but this did not stop me,” he said.
He added that the intruder managed to get loose and ran to a locked door that leads into their washroom. “He was unable to open the door and so I advanced towards him and as I did so the man took out an ice pick and threatened to bore me with it,” Holder recalled.
He said that at that point he thought more about his life and suggested to the man that he would open the door for him. Holder said the intruder agreed, and he