The grim tale of child murderers

Nov 25, 2018 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Yesterday, I had cause to ask a colleague whether there would be no end to the senseless killings. My comments were sparked by the news late Friday night that there was the killing of another pensioner.
Earlier I had been regaled by the death of a 20-year-old woman. She was killed by her paramour and buried in a shallow grave. This happened in a hinterland community. The shocking story was that the couple were always quarreling.
On this occasion, the man, with his superior skills, used a piece of wood to beat the woman. He claimed that he woke up to find her dead in the bed so he buried her. Another miner walking the trail saw the grave and called the police.
Then there was the murder of a man by his drinking buddy. This should not have happened had the owner of the drinking spot adhered to the law. Alcohol should not be sold to a person under eighteen. But there it was, a sixteen-year-old was not only allowed to buy alcohol, but also to sit in the bar and drink.
This matter is before the courts, so I cannot comment extensively. Suffice it to say that when I heard that the killer was sixteen I was shocked. The news also reinforced my view that the criminals and the killers are getting younger.
I was in my office when two people walked in. One of them was fifteen; the other was his brother who wanted to turn in the teen to the police. He was with a group that killed a drug addict on a city street. The teen told me that he was with the group when he saw one of his colleagues pulled a knife.
He claimed that he ran away. However, the police detained his parents, prompting the brother to surrender the teen to the police. I looked at this boy who was tall for his age but as they say, he had not lost his mother’s features.
He is a schoolboy who to my mind, should have been home at that hour. Instead, he was there on the road linked to an allegation that the man who died refused to buy drugs from his crowd. What is a little boy doing selling drugs?
This speaks to parental guidance. Increasingly in certain parts of the city adolescents are allowed to roam. Their work at school is almost non-existent, but there is no parent interested enough to check. Perhaps it is enough to see the child dressed for school.
But that apart, there is the question of the parent being arrested because the police cannot find the child. I discussed this issue with a number of people and got all manner of responses. One person claimed that the police were operating on the precept that the parent was shielding a wanted person.
I wondered if a child of mine had done something and the police were searching for him, whether I would have been arrested and locked up. That would have been most unfair.
It was the same, recently, on East Coast Demerara, where a car salesman opted to seize furniture owned by a grandmother. The contention was that she was a close relative of the man who bought the car. He failed to meet the payments, but the car dealer could not find the car.
I learnt that this seizure was done with backing from the police. I do not understand the principle. The grandmother had nothing to do with the purchase of the car. It would seem that a law has been developed. This law would allow the lender to punish anyone associated with the borrower and so recover his loan.
I know that the woman went to the police to protest but got nowhere. It is now being said that the car dealer spread his money around to ensure that he could do as he pleases.
However, the issue is about the young killers. A just completed case in Berbice featured some young boys who were teenagers when they killed a watchman at a temple. They had gone there to commit a robbery. They have been convicted and condemned to spend the best years of their lives in jail.
Which reminds me of Terrence Sahadeo. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a young Canje girl whom they had gone to rob. Under the direction of the now dead Shireen Khan, he and Muntaz Ally not only robbed the girl, they raped, and then killed her. The knife they used skewered her to the pillow on which she lay. Ally was paroled after thirty-four years in jail but his partner in crime, Sahadeo remains.
The explanation was that while Ally demonstrated remorse and admitted to the crime, Sahadeo remained unrepentant. At the time of the crime, they were nothing more than teenagers. They are now grown men with their best years lost behind them.
There are other young men in the prison system for violent crimes. Tyrone Rowe, familiarly known as Cobra, was jailed for seventy-plus years. He is currently being retried for the same crime for which he was sentenced.
There is Dellon Henry, known as Nasty Man. He was found guilty of murder. He too has another appointment with a judge for the same crime. Henry was a teenager when he entered the system. He has already been there for a number of years, his youth leaving him with each passing day.
Someone once said that there is no handbook for parenting, but there is no substitute for child supervision. If only parents would forego their personal satisfaction to raise their children.

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