Murder on a dusty Tucville road

Feb 19, 2012 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery

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By Michael Jordan

One was a bright student with a promising future. The other was a troubled soul whose criminal career started in his teens. It was 23 years ago that the paths of these two young men crossed on a dusty Tucville road. That fateful meeting would result in their deaths.
It was at around 7:30 am on September 18, 1989, when 17-year-old Vibert Mohan left his mother’s home in South Ruimveldt and headed over into Perry Street, Tucville. He was wearing a Seiko watch, a gold chain and a ring.
It was to be a special day for the young man. He was heading for Guyana Stores Limited for his first job.
Vibert was the last of Ursula Mohan’s five children. His mother was a widow, since her husband had died when the boy was just seven years old. Her eldest boy was forced to leave school to help out financially, but Vibert, the ‘baby’ of the family, and a bright child, was allowed to remain in school.
The sacrifice paid off when the lad graduated with five CXC passes from East Ruimveldt Secondary.
But the young man wanted to repay his family for the sacrifices they had made for him. He decided to find a job while also trying to further his studies, and was granted employment at Guyana Stores.
The lad had a bicycle, and he would usually drop his little niece off to nursery school, but that day, he decided to walk.
Mrs. Mohan was at home when a young man passed and shouted out: “Yuh son dead.”
At first, Mrs. Mohan assumed that she was the victim of a heartless prank. That suspicion ended when she saw a teacher towing her little grand-daughter on a bicycle. Her thought then was: “Like Vibert get in an accident fuh truth.”
But then the teacher came to Mrs. Mohan’s door and said: “Yuh son get rob and killed.”
Ursula Mohan promptly collapsed.
When she was sufficiently revived, Mrs. Mohan went to the murder scene. Vibert’s body was still on the roadway. She observed that his watch and jewellery were missing. Someone had bitten him on the finger on which he had worn the ring. He had been stabbed four times.
Eyewitnesses at the scene recalled seeing another youth chase Vibert Mohan, stab him, and relieve the slain youth of his valuables before fleeing.
The killer was identified as a young man named Rockliffe Ross. Like his victim, Ross, the third of five children, came from a single-parent home. He had attended secondary school, and it was there that he started to show signs of being a troubled young man. He was frequently absent from school. He gambled.
At the age of 13, Rockliffe and other youths were caught gambling in a house. The lad was detained at a police station before being charged with vagrancy and fined. But he got into further trouble and was eventually sent to the New Opportunity Corps.
From there, he began to make frequent ‘visits’ to the Georgetown Prisons for various offences.
“He just kept going in and coming out,” his mother had told me during an interview just before his execution.
“When he was in he would say ‘mom, I would behave when I come out,’ but then he would be back in prison again. He was mixing with bigger boys and smoking marijuana.”
Ross had reportedly only recently left prison when he attacked and killed Vibert Mohan for his watch, chain, ring and $300.
Ross was charged with murder and on April 23, 1992, he was found guilty and sentenced to die by judicial hanging.
Mrs. Ross did everything in her power to save her boy. She hired an attorney to appeal his sentence, but he lost that appeal in 1994. He appealed for clemency to the Advisory Council on the Prerogative of Mercy.
Meanwhile, as the years passed with her son’s killer still on death row, a frustrated Ursula Mohan turned to the press to appeal for justice. She had met her son’s killer for the first time at the Ruimveldt Police Station. She saw him several more times as the case proceeded at snail’s pace through a Preliminary Hearing, then through two trials in the Supreme Court and finally, after a ‘guilty’ verdict, to the Appeal Court.
Finally, on May 30, 1995, the Advisory Council on the Prerogative of Mercy rejected Rockliffe Ross’ appeal.
His fate was sealed on May 30, 1996, when the President of Guyana signed a death warrant stating that Rockliffe Ross be hanged. That execution was set to take place two weeks after Ross’ birthday.
It was at around that time that Mrs. Ross accepted that she could no longer save her son.
“If that’s the way it has to be done, then that’s the way it has to be done,” she had told me a few days before the execution.
“I can’t fight anymore. I’m exhausted. I told myself that if there’s a God, He would deal with it. But if it is on Rockliffe’s scroll (that he be hanged) then he (Rockliffe) would have to deal with it.”
On a rainy day, June 4, 1996, at the stroke of eight o’clock, persons gathered outside the Georgetown Prison heard a muffed ‘thud’ from the gallows trapdoor.
The waiting had finally ended.

If you have any information about other unusual cases, please contact Kaieteur News at our Lot 24 Saffon Street Charlestown location. We can be reached on telephone numbers 22-58465, 22-58491 or 22-58473.
You can also contact Michael Jordan at his email address [email protected].

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