By Jeune Bailey VanKeric
FIFTY-THREE-year-old taxi driver Tunilall Doodnauth was driving his Nissan Bluebird motorcar, HC 4977, in New Amsterdam at about 10:00hrs on Tuesday, when an identifiable youth joined the vehicle and requested to be taken to the West Canefield in East Canje.“Whilst driving along, he asked whether I was doing an airport run, and asked to be taken to the airport within the next hour. So as we got to the end of the street, he told me to stop in the vicinity of a vacant house. I then glanced backwards, as he was seated in the back seat, (and) I saw a ‘Rambo’ knife in the youth’s hand. Instantaneously, the knife was plunged into my left shoulder. Thereafter, he attempted to slash my throat, but I raised my left hand in defence and it was slashed instead.

“He also stabbed me in my chest, before demanding that I get out of the car. I had on the seat belt. I removed it before opening the door and ran away. However, as I ran, he jumped into the driving seat and began to reverse the vehicle. I then ran back to the car. While I was about twenty feet away, he accelerated, and whilst still reversing, he hit me with the rear of the vehicle.

“I fell, and he braced me as the car drove over me, pulling me in the nearby drain. I became unconscious for a few seconds, and on regaining consciousness, I crawled out of the trench. My left arm was numb; I was not feeling it.

“I lay on the parapet and started to holler. Persons came to my rescue. They washed my skin and a car took me to the New Amsterdam Hospital,” Doodnauth related from that health facility, where he is nursing multiple stab wounds about his body following the botched robbery.

Since his admission to the male surgical ward, he has received treatment for the three stab wounds and a fractured left arm.

Meanwhile, his wife Gaitree Doodnauth said her husband was not scheduled to work, but had gone out on her request to collect some crabs from one of her siblings when the incident occurred.

She recalled having being told of her husband’s plight via a phone call and hurrying to the scene, a short distance from her home, where she saw her husband in a bloodied and muddied state.

The woman was high in her praise for residents in the area who responded after hearing her husband call for help.