UP TO late yesterday, police in the interior were hunting for three men whom they said had murdered 50-year-old businessman Linden Mc Almont of 72 Robindra Street, Annandale, East Coast Demerara and stripped his wife Maureen Mc Almont of her jewellery during a robbery at Mango Landing early yesterday morning.

Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle yesterday afternoon at her Annandale address, the dead man’s step-daughter Abiola Fraser said she was at home when she received a call from her mother early yesterday morning to inform that her step-father had been murdered.

Fraser said she enquired from her mother how Mc Almont had been murdered, and was told that the couple had been robbed by bandits during which Mc Almont had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head.

Fraser said that on Wednesday her mother and step-father would have celebrated their third wedding anniversary. She related that the couple operated a grocery shop for the past seven years in the interior location, and it was only last Friday that Maureen Mc Almont had returned to the location after spending a few days in the city.

This newspaper was told that Maureen Mc Almont had just returned from purchasing some items when one of her workers approached her at the vehicle and told her that the police had just visited her husband in the shop. The woman reportedly questioned why her husband would be of any interest to the police, but she nevertheless remained in her vehicle. While sitting there, one of the three bandits approached the car; kicked the door, shattering the window in the process; and began demanding cash and gold from her. The bandits were specific in requesting that the woman hand over her wedding band and earrings. They were also given a gold bracelet which the woman had.

Not satisfied with that haul, the bandit continued to request more gold and jewellery from the woman, who told him that she had recently returned to the area and that business was slow. She was then taken into the shop and directed to a storeroom where she was locked away. By that time her employee had sprinted from the area to seek cover, after he realised that the husband and wife were being robbed.

While being locked in the store room, the woman heard several shots but did not realise that one of those shots had been directed to the head of her husband.

After the bandits left, the couple’s worker returned to the shop and freed the woman from the locked storeroom; and she was told that her husband had fled from the bandits.

However, after waiting a while and not seeing her husband returning, the woman decided to reenter the shop and enter her bedroom, where she found her husband dead in a sitting position with what appeared to be a bullet wound to his head.

Yesterday the police said that the man was pronounced dead on arrival at the Mahdia Hospital, and his body is in that mortuary.