No more fear, just painful memories

Jan 30, 2011 News

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By Dale Andrews

Friday, January 26, 2008 started like any other day. I was actually on annualised leave, tending to the arrangements for the wake of my grandmother who had died a few days earlier.
Since many of my relatives had arrived from overseas, the day was hectic with me getting things together for the funeral the following day. Nothing had prepared me for what was to transpire early the following morning.

While at the wake, one of my cousins remarked, “Dale, you ain’t hear how dem boys in Buxton goin’ on?” At the time, since it was very early in the morning, he had heard the sounds of heavy gunfire and from his vantage point at Melanie Damishana, he had assumed that gunmen in the troubled Buxton area were acting up.
No one knew at the time that one of Guyana’s most violent domestic events was unfolding.
Gunmen were creating mayhem in the tiny community of Lusignan Pasture. When they left, 11 persons, including six children lay dead, some of them slaughtered in the most gruesome way.
The gunmen struck around 01:30 hours early that Saturday, simultaneously kicking down the doors of five houses and slaughtering almost everyone they encountered.
In 15 minutes of terror, the gunmen, who numbered approximately 20, all armed with rifles and shotguns, massacred their victims, in one case an entire family comprising a mother and her two sleeping children.
Among the dead were Shazam Mohamed; Clarence Thomas, his son, Ron 11, and daughter, Vanessa 12; Mohandai Gourdat, 32, and her two children, Seegobin, four years old, and Seegopaul Harilall, 10; Shalem Baksh, 52; Rooplall Seecharan, 56, his daughter Raywattie Ramsingh, 11, and his wife, Dhanrajie, called ‘Sister’, 52.
Three persons were also injured, while at least three persons escaped certain death by hiding while the ‘gunmen carried out their rampage.
The injured were Howard Thomas 19; Nadir Mohamed, 48, and Roberto Thomas, five years old.
To date, no one knows for sure the real motive for the attack, although it was reported that the now dead Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins had claimed responsibility for the attack, declaring it an act of vengeance for the disappearance of his girlfriend and their unborn baby.
Now, normally, I would have grabbed my camera and rushed to the Vigilance Police Station to pick up whatever information there was to pick up, although I was on leave, but for some strange reason I found myself brushing aside the report I received from my cousin.
What a shock I got when daylight arrived and the accounts of what had transpired reached my ears.
Funeral or no funeral, leave or no leave, I had to get there.
I did not know what to expect but when I reached the scene the magnitude of the incident struck me from the time I entered the village. A huge crowed had converged on the narrow streets, almost blocking access by vehicle to where the actual mayhem had taken place.
There was more shock to be had, for when I really got to see what had taken place, I realised that not in my wildest dream would I have thought that this was what my cousin had hinted about hours earlier.
Bodies lay in pools of blood in the houses that had come under attack and in one distressing scene, the bodies of two children one with his stomach open, lay next to their mother.
I consider myself a crime reporter who had become immune to gruesome scenes but what I saw on January 26,2008 will remain with me until I die.

Every year since then I recall the horror either by writing an article or relating to friends the scenes of that tragic morning.
And every time I pass Lusignan, those images would flash through my mind and I would normally relate them to my children, while dropping them to school in the city from my home on the East Coast of Demerara, almost every morning.
Survivors Howard and Ron Thomas have to endure the scars they sustained every time they look in the mirror, so too does Nadir Mohamed, whose son Shazad was one of the victims.
Three years later and they still look at those scars which will always be there no matter how advance –plastic surgery gets.
Yesterday I revisited the community and realised that while those who survived are trying to move on with their lives, but try as they might, they cannot blot out the scars that are stark reminders of the brutality and terror they endured.
Although he has a clearly visible scar on his abdomen, the evidence of a gunshot wound, little Roberto Thomas could not recall what happened-he was too young at the time to comprehend what really transpired.
However, he was clear in his mind that he lost his father, brother and sister in that mayhem.
He participates in every memorial service that has been held since the massacre.
He told me that every time he looks at the scar he would ask his mother, how he got it and with tears in her eyes, she would relate to him what had transpired.
The bubbly toddler related to me that he would sometimes feel pains whenever he runs but this does not stop him from being like every other child his age.
“Whenever it hurts, I would just drink some water and lie down in the hammock,” he said.
I visited the remaining relatives of Mohandai Gourdat who along with her two sons, Seegobin and Seegopaul, were all slaughtered.
Her nephew, Arjune Bhim, who was 10 years old at the time, survived the incident by hiding under a bed.
He appeared shy and reserved when I tried to interview him, maybe not wanting to be pushed into recalling that tragic event.
He however remembered remaining under the bed while his aunt and his two cousins ventured out into the living room at the height of the shooting.
Bhim also lay terrified under the bed, watching the boots of an intruder who probably felt that no one else was in the house he and his cohorts had entered.
It has to be fate that kept Bhim alive since he was not really supposed to be at his aunt’s place that night. He had taken his brother’s place to spend the night with Gourdat and her two small children.
At such a young age he was forced to watch the lifeless bodies of his aunt and his two cousins after emerging from under the bed, mere minutes after the carnage had finished.
He recalled, hearing his aunt beg for her life and those of her children. He also recalled hearing the disdain of the killers as they dismissed her pleas and pumped bullets into her and her children.
The woman’s mother, Basmattie Boodhoo, recalled receiving a telephone call from her daughter even as the gunmen were wreaking havoc in other homes.
She admitted that at no time was she thinking that she would not see her daughter and her children alive again.
Although she does not live too far from the scene she did not go but had the news of their deaths related to her by her son who had ventured over after the shooting had stopped.
“Every time I think of them I cry. Nothing is like before. It’s just like yesterday for me. I don’t show my other children tears because they will worry more about me,” she said, holding back the tears.
“At first it used to haunt me a lot because I could have sat and cried. But then I tell myself that if I continue like this, it could affect my heart,” Boodhoo added.
She said that although immediately after the incident she could have watched footage of the incident on television, nowadays she is too overwhelmed to look at it.
I had earlier visited the home of her son-in-law Rajkumar Harrylall, who was in Trinidad when he learnt that his wife and two children were killed.
Unfortunately, Harrylall called ‘Bobby’ was not at home but I met his mother and his new companion, Priya.
I learnt that ever since the incident Harrrylall has been crying every time he ‘drinks’, obviously remembering that he is now alone without his two children.
“Sometimes he would cry for hours. Every time he drink, he does tek on. Last Christmas and New Year, he cry. All he seh he can do is just kill heself now because he ain’t got nothing more,” the woman said.
I had to remind him that he still has her and she agreed that she is trying desperately to make up that emptiness in his life.
“He tell me don’t buy nothing for Christmas, that he ain’t got Christmas, that he would never get Christmas,” Priya added.
Harrylall’s mother, Tara, is aware that the incident has placed her tiny community on the world map.
“Me never expect Lusignan fuh deh so. Now everybody know bout Lusignan,” she said after telling me that she had lived all her life there.
Nadir Mohamed is another survivor who lost his son Shazad in the mayhem.
He had to endure months of therapy, having to sustain the damage done by the slug from an AK-47 assault rifle.
He told me that he was forced to give up his ground provision farm on the Soesdyke/Llinden Highway because of the injury.
As he remembered that day in January three years ago with his wife who was crying intermittently in her hammock, the thought of what his son Shazad would have become today was haunting him.
“It’s three years now, and how we were bringing him up, we knew that he would have made us proud parents,” Mohamed reasoned.
He is one of the witnesses called to testify at the preliminary inquiry into the murders which is still ongoing at the Vigilance Magistrate’s Court.
“I did not see anybody and that is what I told the court,” he said.
He and his wife however are comforted by the fact that their son died a martyr and according to their religious beliefs, he is in paradise awaiting his eternal blessing ‘in the next life’.
There is no fear now in Lusignan pasture of a repeat of what happened three years ago, but nothing could take away the memories and the image left in the minds of those who have now been left to remember it.
By the way, so taken up was I in covering the Lusignan Massacre, I did not get to attend my grandmother’s funeral.

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