Latest update November 29th, 2024 1:00 AM
Dispute over woman may have caused shooting at bar
– attorney mulls criminal charges against accused cop
By Latoya Giles and Brushell Blackman
Two days after the shooting at a popular city bar, which has resulted in the death of Hewley Barker, 28, information is emerging that a woman was at the centre of the deadly fracas.
Barker was fatally shot on Saturday by an off duty Assistant Superintendent of the Guyana Police Force, while his friend Mark Ceaser, 30, called ‘Lil Mark’ was wounded and is now a patient at the Georgetown Hospital High Dependency Unit (HDU) under police guard.
Speaking to Kaieteur News yesterday, Caesar’s mother, Donna Aaron, said that her son and the policeman allegedly involved in the shooting have a relationship with the same female.
Dead: Hewley Barker
Aaron admitted that her son had a checkered past but he has since changed his life and is living uprightly.
Recounting what transpired on the night of the shooting, the woman said that from what she was told, her son and the now dead Barker were summoned to the bar after a friend was assaulted by the policeman. Aaron said that Caesar and Barker merely went to the bar to make peace when gunshots rang out. When the dust was settled, Barker lay dead while Caesar sprawled bleeding from a gunshot wound to the back.
Also at the hospital yesterday was Caesar’s Attorney, Nigel Hughes, who said that he is in the process of taking statements from eyewitnesses and will be preparing a file to send to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) requesting that murder and attempted murder charges be brought against the policeman.
Further, Hughes said that should the DPP be reluctant to bring charges against the rank he will be filing private criminal charges.
The senior attorney said that from what he was told there was no scuffle between the men and that the shooting was unprovoked.
However, this newspaper was told by an eyewitness that Mark Caesar and Hewley Barker were among a group of men that assaulted the policeman. According to the source, the group has a less than favourable past and is always in a confrontation. The source opined that the men may not have known that the shooter was a policeman and it may have been a case of them ‘barking up the wrong tree’.
Meanwhile, this newspaper has been reliably informed that the cop in question has an interesting past. He was said to be the officer in charge of a batch of policemen that assaulted a family in Agricola two months ago.
Police Commissioner Henry Greene has told this newspaper that the Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the circumstances relating to the officer’s actions.
According to Greene, statements have already been taken and at least two persons have supported the policeman’s version of the events.
On Saturday when this newspaper visited the dead man’s relatives they told a different version.
They are claiming that the killing was extra judicial. Barker’s mother, Sandra Barker, said she last saw her son earlier on Friday when he brought his clothes to be washed. She said that she never really liked the friends that her son kept because they were all shadowy characters.
According to reports, after the officer began shooting, the men scattered but the two injured collapsed.
They were taken to the hospital where Barker was pronounced dead. A police patrol was immediately summoned to the scene.
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