‘Trini’ engineer says wrongfully accused of carjackings

Jul 26, 2015 News

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…provides video, photo evidence of whereabouts

By Sunita Samaroo

“Long time we looking for you boy; long, long time. Finally, we get you now! You responsible for all the carjacking we been having around this place!”

Those were the words Kjell Gill, a mechanical engineer from Trinidad, who remembers being told that mere days into his first trip to Guyana. The utterances were made, he said, when he came face to face with a party of police ranks who were adamant that he had earlier robbed two men of their brand new cars.
Gill arrived in Guyana on July 3, last. After a night of partying on July 17, there he was on the seawall frolicking with six other friends when his trip took an unexpected turn. He said that a jeep load of lawmen pulled up to arrest him for crimes he insists he has no knowledge of.
Gill currently resides in an apartment building on Sandy Babb Street, Kitty, Georgetown and works with a reputable Trinidad engineering company who deployed him here to complete the elevators and escalators at the City Mall.  The engineer is here with two other colleagues.
On Friday, July 17 the three men completed their day’s work at the Mall and headed home around 19:00 hours, he said. At 22:15 hours, the men said that they felt like venturing out so they went to a popular Kitty fish shop and stayed there for about two hours.
They said that they then went to another branch of the same fish shop located on Hadfield Street before the police came and clamped down on the fete at that location because the music had become a nuisance.
Still exploring the Guyana night life, the men said that they hopped in the vehicle of another colleague, who was there, and ventured to Palm Court, on Main and Middle Streets.
The men said that they partied there until the party was shut down at around 02:00 hours the next morning. They had, at this point, picked up a female companion each along with a local friend. The seven of them then ventured to the seawalls where they were talking, laughing and taking a large number of pictures, many of which they showed this publication.
The police pulled up shortly, however, wanting to arrest the dreadlocked Gill. “They said ‘Aye you rasta come!’ He (Gill) said ‘morning’ and then he said he wanted to search him,” his colleague, Sherwin Moore said.
The engineer said that when he spoke and his accent became apparent, the officer insisted that he be taken into custody. The engineer is contending that if he was indeed the carjacker, the police would have been hot on his trails but four police vehicles had passed that morning and stopped to speak with them.
He said, it was different, however, when the investigating rank came to arrest him, claiming that they had been hunting him down for quite some time.
“I said officer, how could you be looking for me for a long time if it’s only a week and a half now since I got here?’ He said ‘Nah don’t tell me that, don’t tell me that. Long time we’re looking for you and we finally catch you!’
He said ‘You and your partners them are the reason the hijacking them happening in Guyana,’” the engineer recalled being told.
Eventually, Gill was taken away by the police. His friends followed in their vehicle but when the police jeep drove in the East La Penitence Police Station, they locked the gate with a pair of handcuffs. The next morning when they returned to the police station, they learnt that Gill was being held for two alleged carjackings.
“This detective (name given) keeps insisting it’s him,” the men stated.
He said he was later taken to the Providence Police Station. “Everybody kept coming by the cell asking questions. One said that he heard three stories and I explained what happened and everybody just laughing.”
“They are claiming I have an accomplice but they have no one else in custody,” he said.
Identification Parade and Confrontation
He said while at the East La Penitence Police Station, one of the reported victims studied him and finally said that he ‘felt’ it was him. He recalled hearing “I feel is him. I believe is him.” While the other reported carjacking victim reportedly said “Nah, I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s that fellah.”
The session was being facilitated by the same detective who arrested him. Gill said that after one of the victims said that he does not “think” it was him, the officer sent him outside.
The investigating rank reportedly spoke to the victims privately in the room for some time and later summoned Gill back into the room.
This time, the men changed their stories and maintained that it was the Trinidadian engineer who had indeed robbed them, Gill said.
 Mistaken Identity
The men are insisting that it is a case of mistaken identity. “We are all together,” they said repeatedly during the interview with this publication. The engineer is insisting, too, that there are holes in the story told by the carjacking victims.
“I don’t know what’s going on…the men are saying that I was moving with a fellah right through, but how could it be? How come you can’t identify this person I was with? Then he said I had a bright and shiny red phone but I have a white phone.
“Everything one said, the other one said too.”
The Trinidadians say that they have evidence of their whereabouts. The men have footage from their apartment building showing when they arrived and left the apartment that night and insist that footage can be retrieved from the various nightspots to show just where they were when the men were being robbed elsewhere.
“The time they are saying we were robbing, we have video to show where we were,” Moore chimed in.
But their insistence to have the police retrieve video footage from the business entities or even look at the videos and photographs they have in their phones have been rejected, according to the three men.
“I said ‘Officer in the Fish Shop we sat down right by the cameras. Officer all you have to do is go back by the Fish Shop you will see us.’ But he said he doesn’t want to see anything, he doesn’t want to hear anything,” he explained.
“It’s a clear case of mistaken identity. These guys (three Trinidad men) came here on July 3. They don’t know this place. It’s impossible for him to come to Guyana and hijack two cars in one night,” said City Mall Manager, Desmond Hellwing, who came with the men to Kaieteur News yesterday.
“These men don’t even know where Stabroek Market is,” the Manager intimated.
Gill was released on $100,000 station bail; his passport and cellular phone have been taken away by the police.

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