There is a cadre of very young gunmen

Feb 05, 2017 Features / Columnists, My Column

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This past week brought the age of the gunmen into sharp focus. News came that the police had arrested a gunman implicated in the killing of a restaurant worker on D’Urban Street. Needless to say the news was greeted with some excitement. After all, many in the news had seen the video of the killing and could not understand why the police had failed to make an arrest, despite the numerous wanted bulletins that had been posted.
This time, the news was that the suspect was crippled. Word is that he was shot by another local gunman while they were both in Suriname. As the story goes the two men met on the streets of Paramaribo. The now crippled person reportedly told the other that he would deal with him for killing his friend.
There is an old saying that if you raise your hand to kill the king then you must kill him. In local parlance, “Mek attempt gone.” The now crippled fellow after making his threat turned his back on the other person and got shot. The bullets hit his spine. He is now 21 years old and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his natural life.
The shooter for his part, returned home, where he was the prime suspect in the death of another young man named Sherwyn Barrow. He in turn got shot dead, some say by a group of people who travelled from Suriname. He too had just turned twenty.
Not so long ago the police confronted two men who had robbed a home in Campbellville. They ran into a cemetery and were killed. They too were in their early twenties.
It would seem that some young men, who did not benefit from the free education being provided, turn to the gun for a living. Some have made good in the interim. One group made off with $6 million. I cannot say what they do with that money which is enough to build a small home. What I do know is that not long after they go out for even more money.
What is surprising is that people know the perpetrators of these crimes but they say nothing, some because they fear retaliation and others because they benefit from the proceeds.
There is the case of a woman in Kaneville who found a gun in her yard. She picked it up with the intention of calling the police. However the owner of the gun went in search of the gun and failing to find it, confronted the woman who became afraid and turned it over.
For her efforts, she lost her home and her grandchild in a conflagration. She said that she knew the perpetrators and said as much to the police. Three days ago the police caught the main person miles away, in Mahdia. Credit must go to the police for being able to circulate information and descriptions to their colleagues.
This was the case when the police were hunting the killers of a Regent Street businessman, Ganesh Ramlall. The news stated, “48–year–old Ganesh Ramlall was gunned down outside his house. The businessman, who owns the Multiplex Mall on Regent Street, Georgetown, was shot some five times, including once to the head.”
The investigation was intense and not long after the police were able to arrest the suspects. But one remained at large. He was called Banana.
A police patrol had stopped on High Street when one of the men spotted Banana. He went and arrested him immediately. How he was able to identify the man must be due to great police description. This brings us back to the point that people know who perpetrate the crimes.
These gun crimes have people talking that Guyana is a dangerous place. It matters not that there are places so much more dangerous than Guyana. Every day as I watch the news I see a shooting in Miami. Yet Guyanese do not say that Miami is a dangerous place.
There were the massacres at Bartica and Lusignan back in 2008. A combined twenty-three people died violently. Again most of the killers were young men, some of them in their teens. The trial for the Bartica massacre ended late last week.
I was in the court when one of them opted to plead guilty. He was sent to jail for a long time, so long that I would be dead and gone before he comes out, if he lives that long. Two cousins got the death penalty for murder and even more jail time, life imprisonment, on manslaughter charges. These are also young men.
One of them had been fingered in a robbery on a Guyana Sugar Corporation payroll, but he was freed by the courts. I would expect that having come so close to serious jail time, this person would eschew the gun. Not so. He is now on Death Row.
As fate would have it, Guyana has a leader who says that he will hang no one, so those sentenced to death could breathe easy. However, living in the shadow of the gallows must be a harsh reality. One judge, aware that the state was not hanging anyone, imposed some of the harshest sentences in the history of the country. He apparently is making sure that these people do not walk the streets again.
I wonder at the role of parents in the lives of these young men. For the most part the fathers are not around, so it is left to the mothers to bring up these children. I spoke to the mother of the crippled young man, who admits that her son has been in prison for another crime but was released on bail and has not been convicted.
She spoke of the difficulty to take care of the every need of her son who “can do nothing for himself.” I wonder where she went wrong with his upbringing. There are other parents who must deal with their young criminals. Some of them are law-abiding. Just last week a mother turned in her son to the Brickdam Police Station after she learned that he was involved in a gun robbery. If only there were other similarly law-abiding parents in the mix.

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