Georgetown Seawall, Guyana’s killing field

Oct 09, 2017 News

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I was shopping at the special Sunday Robb Street market next to Bourda Market when Hamilton Green rang. He said he read my Sunday column on the countless numbers who got attacked on the Georgetown Seawall and thought that I should expand on it in a feature. He gave me some interesting notes. I ran the idea with my editor, Michael Jordan who agreed.
Hamilton Green asked me if I knew the famous Adamson’s Bend on the seawall road. I said I didn’t, but I know the bend. That bend has fond memories. It was at that spot my little daughter played for the last time as a family unit going out on the seawall. Since that day, she has never gone back with me and wife to the seawall and that was more than twenty years ago.
I sat by Adamson’s Bend for countless years when I was a six-year-old when my father worked as a groundsman for St. Stanislaus Cricket Ground, grew up and visited the seawall my entire life and didn’t know until October 8, 2017 that a particular spot on the Camp Street Seawall that I like is named Adamson’s Bend.
Green told me a local white engineer, many, many moons ago was chopped to death at the bend while out with his lover. As he lay dying, a white man drove by, went to him, asked what happened; and the dying man said he preferred not to talk.
It would appear that Adamson was killed out of a rival’s jealousy. Green said from that time, the spot was named Adamson’s Bend. Maybe if I get money because of the memories of my kid, I will pay for the erection of the Adamson’s Bend signboard. An estate worker, Hilbert Donny, was charged for Adamson’s murder. It was the first murder case that JOF Haynes did. He won and from thereon rose to Caribbean fame.
I know the Camp Street Seawall like the back of my hand. I spent years there as a child roaming while my dad worked away at the Saint’s ground. That seawall is the killing field of this country. Do you know how many souls have been robbed, raped and killed on that stretch starting from Fort Groyne at the Kingston jetty to Ogle gas station?
The most famous victim is the Lebanese-type belly dancer, Dolly Baksh, whose brother Sammy became a tiny rival with Johnny Braff though that may be an exaggeration of mine. But Sammy had some hits, of which ‘To Be Lonely’ remains one of Guyana’s most popular local tunes.

Dolly was battered to death along with her boyfriend right at that long stretch of seawall, near Pere Street, Kitty in 1979.
She remains the most famous victim but there were other gruesome acts similar to how Adamson met his death.
When the bauxite company was nationalised, the white expatriates left. A Czechoslovakian engineer by the name of Vrany stayed on. He was hacked to death, one night on the seawall at Liliendaal; his lover was spared. The speculation was he was killed out of a rival’s jealously like Adamson. His lover was hospitalised and so the press got to know her identity. She was the wife of the top man in a certain military outfit.
The robberies, rapes, and murders will go on at that particular killing field because Guyanese have a psychic problem. Just imagine, the head of the SWAT Team in the police force was robbed on that desolate stretch of seawall last week. When will Guyanese learn?
Father Andrew Morrison introduced me to a Catholic volunteer at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital. I became friends with him. He fell in love with the female pharmacist. They were robbed and his girl friend raped.

It was never reported. He left Guyana with her, married her and never returned here. Do you know right on the spot where Vrany was killed, one Sunday afternoon ten years ago, around 6pm, yes 6pm, a man sitting there was lashed on his head and robbed? He died. I remember reading that item in the newspapers and was shocked because an hour before the death, I had jogged past there with the father-in-law of the current Junior Minister of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma.
Some really tragic deaths have occurred in that murder field. There was the Citizen Bank employee, Tommy Orderson. He was gunned down. The warden of the Beharry Residence, Mr. Ramdin was shot and burnt in his car literally yards away from where Orderson died. Actor, Joel Fraser was murdered not too far from where Vrany died. I knew Joel well. He was also a Bourda ‘greens pumpkin vendor’ that I patronised. His throat was slashed and head bashed in.
There was also Trevor Johnson, a 40-year-old shipping company employee, who was gunned down on the seawalls on February 21, 2002.

Elton Campbell, relative of editor, Adam Harris, was murdered in the night at the Fort Groyne Seawall. Since Adamson’s homicide, there has been no arrest and prosecution of subsequent murders in the killing field of Guyana.
(Frederick Kissoon)

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