Health workers express fear over prisoners admission to GPHC

Mar 16, 2014 News

Health workers attached to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) have expressed concerns over the recent admission of a 24-year-old man who was involved in a shootout with the police on Friday.
Keron Cummings, of ‘B’ Field Sophia was shot to the left shoulder and somewhere around the right rib area by a rank while he was attempting to rob a woman in the vicinity of the Sophia Health Centre.

On the run:
Delroy Brown

He was arrested after jumping into a nearby canal in which an unlicensed .38 revolver with three live rounds and a spent shell were later recovered.
Cummings is now a patient under police guard in the GPHC’s Male Surgical Ward.
Hours before Cummings was shot by ranks, he had opened fire on a Lamaha Springs resident and then ran into Sophia.
The woman, Garalanda Benn, said that Cummings opened fire on her early Friday and she was forced to run into her neighbour’s yard to seek shelter.
She said it all started last Wednesday, when she and her mother were sitting on their veranda and Cummings asked her for a drink of water.
“I found it really strange that this man asking for water, so I told him that we don’t have and that I have to buy. He asked if I can allow him to come into the yard to go to the pipe and I told him that we have blackout and water wasn’t running,” the woman said.
She explained that Cummings told her that he resides at ‘C’ Field Sophia and whenever he passed in front of her home, he would talk to her father. “He said if it was my father, then my father would have given him the water.”
According to Benn, Cummings did not move from her gap. “He said ‘you don’t want to give me some water I will show you what I can do’ and he pulled out a gun and aimed at me.”
The young woman said that she and her mother immediately dropped to the floor and crawled inside of the house and locked their door. Cummings then left.
However, he reportedly returned early on Friday.
“I was closing my gate and I saw him approaching me and he was going into his haversack, so I ran into my neighbour yard because my gate was already locked. He followed me, then he turned back and fired a shot and he left.”
The police were informed and were in the area looking for Cummings, who reportedly fled into Sophia.
Police said they trailed the suspect into Sophia, where he was subsequently shot and apprehended.

Keron Cummings

Meanwhile, at the hospital yesterday, a number of health workers claimed that they are scared for their lives with Cummings being admitted to the ward.
“He is dangerous. Look at how he went back to Lamaha Springs to shoot that woman, you ain’t see if he ain’t pleased with the services we offer him, he might return on us after he is released from jail,” a nurse said.
Only six days ago a prisoner, Delroy Brown, who was detained after he and an accomplice were caught with two unlicenced guns, managed to escape from the hospital by picking the handcuffs that the police had used to chain his left hand to the bed.
On January 6, last, a Police Corporal, Silburn Elias, was shot dead after he went into a yard in Fourth Street, Alberttown to recapture an escaped prisoner who had grabbed his colleague’s weapon at the GPHC before escaping.
And, on November 30, last, another prisoner, Edgar Blackman of Houston, East Bank Demerara, escaped from the hospital. He was beaten by residents in Sophia after he grabbed a young lady’s laptop computer.
“Look at what we have to deal with. You don’t know what these men are capable of doing. Let’s say a relative comes to visit the detainee, and passes a gun or some other weapon to him, you ain’t see what’s going to happen? It’s frightening to even think about it,” a hospital source added.
Another worker said that the police who are guarding these prisoners spend more time on their phone than looking at the detainees.
Meanwhile, the GPHC’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Khan said that the hospital and the Guyana Police Force should in future make certain arrangements so that no party would be uncomfortable with anything.