Tears and madness take centre stage

Apr 08, 2018 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The recent forum on illicit drugs at the Ramada Georgetown Princess Hotel offered some revealing statistics. Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, found research that not only shocked but also caused people to ask questions.
His research revealed that people in this corner of the world were killing more people than those who were raining death in the war zones. I kept following the happenings in Syria and Mosul. I saw the horrifying effects. Bombs rained on communities killing many and trapping others in the rubble of collapsed buildings.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, we apparently have a war of a different sort, because more people have been killed. One research showed that in Brazil, the number of deaths in one month was more than the people killed in either Mosul or in Syria, where the United Nations had to appeal to the aggressors to allow help to reach the besieged people.
When I look at Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica, I see a battlefield of a different sort. The year is just three months old and already nearly 140 people have been killed in Trinidad. In Jamaica the figure is much higher. There were no soldiers on the ground and no bombs fell from the skies to kill the victims.
In Guyana, we are not too far behind. Last week alone three people died, all violently. One of the killings was particularly savage. There was this man shooting his woman in the head. When she fell he pumped thirteen more bullets into her body.
This kind of killing is left to the wars, where in the heat of battle, people lose all sense of reasoning. However, if the victim is unarmed then the killer would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. There will be no insanity defence, although the conditions could have sparked such a defence.
I followed this particular case especially after I heard about a Facebook posting that suggested that there was a death threat. Then there were reports of friends reporting that the woman was often the victim of abuse. But for the greater part, she often said nothing.
More recently I began to hear of infidelity. From my point of view, they were not married, although they lived like man and wife. I always say that there is not a woman who is worth one day in jail. If a woman begins to get a roving eye then it means that I am not doing something right. The end result is that I should move on and let the woman enjoy her life.
People began to talk about this now dead woman having a partner who lived overseas. They also said that she was to have travelled overseas this month end, sparking a comment from the killer that she surely would not be going anywhere this month end.
Where things become interesting is when the killer is taken to court. Every newspaper screamed about the tearful killer. There is this shooter who had no compunction to shooting an unarmed woman, crying before the magistrate. Some said that he cried uncontrollably and I find this strange.
Of interest was the fact that those who witnessed the performance were also reduced to tears. Among them were his relatives and close friends. I suspect that even my court reporter cried, but I cannot swear to that.
A man who earlier threatened to destroy his career and put the woman in a box. He knew what he was talking about and he knew what he was doing. This killing was premeditated. But let us assume that he had mental issues, then it is frightening to think that a mentally ill man was allowed to walk around with a loaded firearm. According to his lawyer, this man was seeing a psychiatrist for the past two years.
Did he talk about the voices he was hearing in his head? Did he talk about the visions he saw? Did he talk about his violent fits of anger?
Being the aide de camp to the Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force, this mentally ill man from time to time would have been in the company of President David Granger. That was a dangerous situation. Yet it would seem that the army was oblivious to any danger this man could have posed to anyone, including himself.
For all the focus this man attracted because centre stage belonged to him, there was another killer who must be mentioned. Coming out of Berbice was the case of two teenagers who killed a watchman by slitting his throat and breaking his leg.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the mindset of these teenagers. Then there was the mother who for all the love in the world clung to her killer son. What was their conversation about? I remember the mother who swore by her son to the bitter end until she was confronted with the evidence. This happened on Croal Street.
The son was with others when he snatched a gold chain from someone and on being chased, dived into the canal to hide under a bridge on Avenue of the Republic.
People began to talk, so the mother turned up on the scene and swore by her son until a man recovered the body with the gold chain still clenched in his fist.
My mother always sent me to take back what did not belong to me. She also did not go out of her way to defend me when I was in the wrong. Knowing how she was, I always tried to keep as best as possible to the straight and narrow. Of course I raided fruit trees; of course dodged the owners, and if I was spotted and reported on, I was quick to own up, because to do otherwise was to attract the wrath of a woman who said that she was embarrassed.
Yet nothing beats the tearful killer.

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