Slaying of KN pressmen still vivid

Aug 09, 2011 News

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By Dale Andrews

Yesterday marked five years since a marauding gang of vicious, misguided and illiterate youths stormed the Eccles, East Bank Demerara printery of this newspaper and slaughtered five of our co-workers.
Chetram Persaud, Eion Wegman, Richard Stewart, Mark Maikoo and Shazeem Mohamed were all placed to lie down and shot at point blank range to the back of their heads.
It was as if the killings were ritualistic, for I have never seen anything like that before or after in all my years of crime reporting – and mind you I have seen enough.
I have witnessed the slaying of criminals, some in the most brutal ways, and the slaughter of innocent civilians.  I have seen the slaughter at Buxton when ‘Baby Arthur’ went berserk, the massacre at Lusignan of 11 persons and yet none of them hit me with the force that the slaying of my colleagues did.
In all the other mentioned cases I was compelled to take photographs of the scene but on August 8th, 2006, for some strange reason, I could not bring myself to even take out my camera from its case.
Yesterday passed without a word of the killing and while it appears as if we had forgotten, I have concluded that that was deliberate as none of us who were employed with the company on August 8th 2006 and are still with the newspaper today, wanted to bring up the subject.
But we could not remain silent for long and yesterday, the memories of what happened on that fateful day came vividly back to me.
It was in the height of the crime wave that had begun four years prior, and that night I left the office to go up to Buxton on the East Coast of Demerara to investigate a shooting incident between gunmen who were holed up in that village and members of the security forces.
In hindsight, I brought myself to think that that was a decoy, for when all the mayhem was taking place on the East Bank, the absence of the security forces was quite conspicuous.
While on the East Coast, I had gathered the information for my story, and excited, I contacted the newspaper’s editor, who at the time was Gwen Evelyn, to tell her that I had the major story for the day.
To this day I still remember her response to me: “Boy you better leave that story and come back to the office.”
“Why?” I asked incredulously.
“You didn’t hear? They went into the press and killed all the pressmen,” was Gwen’s reply.
I remember my feet getting very light and driving becoming very difficult after hearing those words.
I did not ask who were killed and assumed that my good friend Harry was among the dead.
As it turned out, Harry and a security guard were the only survivors of the massacre.
He later told me that while all of them had secured themselves in a toilet when the gang stormed the facility, he was the only one who remained inside when the gunmen ordered them out.
He related that the others had complied with the gunmen’s request thinking that they were only going to be robbed and then left alone. They were dead wrong.
Harry said that he watched through a crease in the door and saw his colleagues’  “feet jumping”, with each passing gunshot as the life was snuffed out of them. I could only imagine how he felt after the men had left and he emerged to see his five workmates lying mortally wounded only a few feet from where he was hiding.
I could also only imagine how those workers who turned up late for work that night must have be felt.
While returning to the city I tried to imagine the scene, since our office was separate from that location.
Upon arrival there I was greeted by employees whose demeanour I still cannot describe to this day. My boss Glenn Lall was livid and could not hold back the tears. However he remained steadfast that we print the newspaper for that day, in honour of the fallen heroes.
When I entered the pressroom, the bodies were still lying on the ground and there was the overwhelming smell of death.
No one went home that night; we all stayed until day clean, obviously in shock of what had transpired. I doubt that any one of us who were there could have slept that night. But we all returned to work the next day, defiant in the face of the adversity that could have flattened us.
I guess we took strength from publisher Glenn Lall, who despite his obvious feeling of loss, remained resolute in his approach to the entire episode.
The days that followed were like a dream, with funeral after funeral to be attended.
When it was all over we buckled down to see what the police would come up with in the form of justice for our fallen heroes.
Soon enough a number of persons from the Agricola community were arrested and their ages were a shock to almost everyone.
One of the alleged killers was no more than 13 years old, while none of them was above 18.
What struck me was the fact that the 13-year-old, of all the accused, showed absolutely no remorse.
He and two others were eventually committed to stand trial in the High Court for the murders.
Incidentally, the reported gang leader Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles who was also facing the court was killed after his short-lived escape from lawful custody.
As for the publisher of the Kaieteur News, nothing will erase the memories of that tragic night.
“I never got over it and I don’t think that anyone who experienced what I experienced could forget such a tragedy. It will be a lasting sore within me. Every now and again I remember. These were not employees, they were more like family, the Kaieteur News family,” Lall reflected.
“My heart goes out to their loved ones, and from time to time I would offer them words of comfort. It is sad and hard for their loved ones and I hope they are holding up, and they should take comfort that their relatives did not die in vain,” the publisher added.
To date, no one knows the real motive for the killings, but it is widely viewed as a direct attack on the freedom of the press.
Today, the entire staff of Kaieteur News as well as those former staff members who had shared that painful moment five years ago will remember those who paid the ultimate price for the maintenance of the free press.

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