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Bare Roots residents, police clash after teenager shot
Shot teen: Yonick Willis called “Baiju”
The bullet hole in Willis’s trousers.
A Bare Roots teenager was last evening shot in controversial circumstances, with police and villagers subsequently clashing.
Police officials later claimed that 19-year-old Yonick Willis called “Baiju” of Bare Roots, East Coast Demerara, was a suspect in a robbery- a claim that was passionately denied by relatives and villagers alike.
Angry relatives said that police ranks, from the Tactical Services Unit (TSU), shot the unarmed ex-soldier while he was on the ground.
Speaking to Kaieteur News at the Georgetown Public Hospital last evening, Willis, who was nursing a bullet wound to his left leg, said that he was sent by his mother, Seema Willis, to check on a new home they were building in the area. He admitted that he had been carrying a knife.
“Yeah, I had a knife on me because I was eating mango. After I see de police van, I start to ride away because me ent had no light… then I hear shots.”
The injured teen said he threw the knife into a nearby trench, but the police saw the movement and caught up with him.
“This policeman come up to me and he shoot me in me foot…and he ask me about the gun. I tell he I ent have no gun.”
Willis denied he was in any robbery and claimed he was forced to search for a “gun” in the trench.
Investigators last evening reportedly took possession of the police weapon and are said to be probing the incident.
Kaieteur News arrived in Bare Roots shortly after 19:00hrs, and found an almost entire village venting their anger at what they perceived were unwarranted actions by the lawmen.
They lamented the fact that the police continue to raid their community causing them to feel as if they are living in a police state.
According to Michelle Solomon, a long-time resident who is close to the Willis family, she heard shots and became worried because she had just sent her son to the shop.
“I see the police hold a guy and after I try to pass, he start kicking and he kick me in the belly.”
According to her son, Jason Lewis, the police have been harassing residents of the village over the past weeks.
Seema Willis remonstrates with the police outside the Accident and Emergency unit of the Georgetown Hospital last night.
“They passing every day and even if yuh ent gat nothing on yuh, they hitting yuh. I know that child…he is a good boy. Li’l children in the area and they shooting like they mad.”
Residents accused the police of severely beating Willis even though he was already wounded and during a brief stand-off, some of them even dared the ranks to shoot them also.
Residents were not immediately sure if Willis was shot at the scene, with some of them even suggesting that he was shot while being escorted to the Vigilance Police Station.
However when this newspaper visited the station, Willis had already been whisked away to the hospital.
Kaieteur News understands that the incident started shortly after 18:00 hrs and ended with two vehicles, including an armoured van, converging on the scene.
A traumatised and clearly upset Seema Willis, the teen’s mother, said emphatically that her son was no robber nor does he have a criminal record.
“Dem shoot he deliberately. Dis nah right. Dis is advantage.”
Meanwhile, police in their version of what took place, told this newspaper that they had received information that three nights ago, a person fitting the description of Willis, had robbed a policeman’s sister in Martyr’s Ville, Mon Repos.
According to the police, they learnt that the suspect was from Bare Roots and decided to go into the community in search of him.
Yesterday afternoon, they said, the suspect was spotted and he attempted to ride away.
The police said that they observed Willis pull a gun from his waist and throw it into a trench, following which they opened fire hitting him in the left hip.
However, although the ranks also combed the trench for the gun they alleged that Willis disposed of, they came up empty.
The bullet that struck Willis exited through his thigh, but he was still admitted a patient under guard at the hospital.
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