A messenger is silenced, brutally

Mar 15, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I was at my desk when word came that a man had been shot multiple times at Agricola, Tuesday night. So there I was assigning a reporter and telling him that he needed to head to Agricola. Soon after he called me to ask whether I was certain, because a contact had told him that the shooting was in Diamond.
I replied that I was certain. Little did I know that there was indeed a shooting at Diamond, almost simultaneous with the killing at Agricola. But I got the news pretty quickly and got another reporter to head to Diamond.
When the reporter called to say that the victim at Diamond was Courtney Crum-Ewing, I was stunned. A colleague editor, Nigel McKenzie, then called a number of people who had been associates of Crum-Ewing. He told me that their reaction was not dissimilar from mine. They simply could not believe it.
What has happened since then has been in the news. I know that I visited the parents and I saw their grief first hand. I heard their accounts of what people told them and I got reports of what the police were doing.
Sometimes in life it is damned if you do and damned if you don’t. The police response was almost instantaneous and people reacted to this rapid response. They said that they had never seen such a response, so they wondered whether the police were party to the killing.
There were eyewitnesses; many of them testified to seeing some of what happened. However, their account, while useful, has not borne the expected result. But I know that there was an eyewitness to the murder, and that the person is afraid to say anything for fear that the guns could be pointed in his direction, because in his view the state cannot protect him.
In a country where the Head of State has openly called for the killers to be brought to justice, I cannot understand the fear on the part of this eyewitness. But then again, people feel that many statements by officials only serve as window dressing; that they are not really serious. I know that President Ramotar was serious. I saw his face when he made his call and I heard his call for not only the killers but also the intellectual authors to be brought to book.
The police had reported that there were four men in the car that carried the shooter. From a telephone conversation with someone I knew, the eyewitness said that there were two. The police spoke about two cars; the eyewitness confirmed this, but added that two more people were in the other car.
He said to his friend that he saw a man come from the second car and peer at the body on the road then utter the confirmation, “Yes, is he.”
Another person said that he heard the gunman say to Crum-Ewing, “You don’t mean fuh done wid this stupidness?”
What stupidness? I would like to see the killers brought to justice, because a man in this country has freedom of speech. I say this because many believed that Crum-Ewing was killed because he was promoting APNU-AFC. In fact, people in the neighbourhood told me that he was saying, “If you don’t like black people, then vote for Nagamootoo. And if you don’t like Indian people, then vote for Granger.”
He was said to be going house to house in Diamond with his message that must have infuriated some people. But we don’t kill people for that. The political parties send people house to house. If we were to kill those people who come to our homes with a message that runs counter to our political views then the streets would be littered with bodies.
If this was a political killing, then Guyana has moved to another stage. It could make undecided voters adopt a position rather than curtail the support people may have for one political party or the other. Indeed, it was senseless, and many people would rue this killing.
One foreign diplomat did say to me that for people to conclude that it was a political killing would be for them to make a quantum leap. But this is Guyana and I know people. There were reports that Crum-Ewing received threats and reported them to the Brickdam Police Station. He named those who threatened him. I do not know if the police have questioned any of these people.
I saw a photograph of Crum-Ewing shortly before he died. Someone took the photograph of the man walking along the street with his bullhorn and a huge Guyana flag sticking out of his back pocket. It was taken from an upstairs apartment and the sight moved me. Crum-Ewing did not know that he was going to his death.
He attended Queen’s College, was an excellent athlete to the point of representing Guyana. News of his death spread far and wide. Alumnae have penned an open letter to the people of this country. But even as this was being done there were people in our midst who believed that they could also be victims.
I hasten to add that the police recovered spent shells from the scene which suggested that the killer used a pistol. If that pistol was legally acquired, then the police have the capacity to match the shells to the gun and consequently to the owner. I hope that they do.
If it is an illegal weapon then that is another story and testimony to the fact that guns proliferate in the society.
There is another good thing. A colleague of mine, in my presence, asked Crum-Ewing’s parents to make a public appeal for calm. In short, he was asking them to resist the call for vengeance and I support him. We can ill-afford such a thing. I lived through the early 1960s and I know what it was to wake up and hear about tit-for-tat killings.
And to Donna Harcourt and her two remaining children, I say that I do know what it is to lose a child. I lost mine through a medical condition. You have lost yours through senseless violence. But our loss is a loss. Keep the faith.

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