Two years later relatives losing confidence in police investigations

Jul 18, 2010 News

On July 19, 2008, Guyanese Christopher Anthony Griffith was a patron at the Hippo Bar on Bay Street, St. Michael, Barbados, when gunmen stormed the popular hangout spot.

Within minutes of the attack, Griffith who hailed from Pamona Village on the Essequibo Coast lay dead with multiple gunshot wounds, while his friend, Seelochanie Samuels, another Guyanese national who owned the bar was critically wounded.

Barbados Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin

Chirstopher Anthony Griffith

Initially, the killing was deemed to be as a result of a robbery but speculations grew that it may have been related to the 26-year-old Griffith’s relationship with the female bar owner. Relatives of the dead man said that he and Samuels were very close.

But as days and months passed without any arrest, the feeling among Guyanese nationals in Barbados was that the island’s police were doing very little to solve the crime.

That feeling was sparked by the Barbados authorities’ announcement that it was cracking down on illegal immigrants many of whom are Guyanese.

Two years later the situation with the case remains the same.

Griffith’s sister, Abiola Alleyne, who resides on the island, told this newspaper via e-mail early last week that there appears to be little interest on the part of the Barbadian police to deal with the matter. She said that she recently spoke with the officer who was mandated to investigate the matter and he informed that there is nothing new that investigators have been able to come up with two years after the killing.

But this is despite Samuels indicating that she saw an accused in the Barbados papers who fitted the description of one of the killers.

“The owner at the shop said she saw someone in the papers and that she called the police and no one got back to her to make the necessary arrangements to go to the prison for her to identify the person, and see if it might be him,” Alleyne said.

The killers are believed to be Barbadians.

“The police just said they have the pictures of the same person to take to her but everyday something happening that they have to deal with so he will make an effort to get to her some time,” she added.

To say that she and the rest of the family are disappointed with the way the matter is being handled is an understatement.

This newspaper had raised the matter with the Commissioner of Police of the Royal Barbados Police Force, Darwin Dottin, during his visit to Guyana last year for the Annual Conference of Caribbean Commissioners of Police.

He had given his direct telephone number and requested that this newspaper make contact with him when he returned to Barbados.

This was done unsuccessfully on several occasions despite a number of messages left with his secretary.

Relatives of the dead Guyanese had also cast blame on the late Guyanese Consul in Barbados, Norman Faria, who they said had not been acting in the interest of his countrymen.

“As far as I know the Guyana Consul here has never looked into the matter. He has never contacted me. I have to be calling the police to find out what is happening. He (Consul) for one has done nothing,” Abiola Alleyne had told this newspaper last year.

“A few months ago a Canadian citizen died after she was attacked on a beach here. Within a short time they found the killer,” she reasoned. She said that a description of the killer was given to the Barbadian investigators and yet there appears to be no intensified effort to apprehend him.

“Barbados is a small island and with the description, they (investigators) should have been able to find him after one year. I don’t want my brother’s murder to go unsolved,” Alleyne lamented last year. His mother, Edith Latchman, who cannot get the issue out of her mind, has almost given up hope that her son’s murder on the island will be solved.