Overseas team concludes probe into gruesome murder of West Berbice Teens; report expected soon

Oct 15, 2020 News

Murdered: Haresh Singh

Murdered: Joel and Isaiah Henry

Kaieteur News – Detectives from the Guyana Police Force (GPF) will soon expect a detailed report from the five-member Regional Security System (RSS) team who provided assistance to investigators with their probe into the gruesome murders of three West Coast Berbice teens – an incident that sparked nationwide protest action.
Providing this update on the sidelines of an event yesterday was Commissioner Nigel Hoppie, who told reporters that the team concluded their stint and departed Guyana last week. However, whether the details of their report will be made public remains unclear.
Commissioner Hoppie sought to reiterate the Force’s commitment to “leave no stone unturned” as the investigation continues. He noted that the police are pursuing a series of new leads but declined to disclose same.
Providing a further update, he stated that the police are still awaiting official results from crime scene samples that were sent overseas for testing.
The Force had hit a bump in their investigations after it was revealed that the teens were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped at Cotton Tree. Detectives had encountered difficulties accessing the crime scene due to the several days of violent protests by the people of West Coast Berbice.
However, after the chaos subsided, investigating ranks were able to access the scene and only then could have determined that the boys were not killed at the spot where they were found.
The Force had said that a full-fledged team that consisted of 75 police ranks, the Major Crimes Unit (MCU) from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters along with ranks from the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and Government Pathologist Dr. Nehaul Singh on Thursday conducted a “methodical” eight-hour search in the backlands with the hopes of finding anything of evidential value to the investigations.
Ranks on the ground also received aerial support via a helicopter from the GDF. The team led by the Regional Commander unfortunately failed to find any evidence to aid their investigations leading to the arrival of the RSS.
The Force will also soon receive another boost in their investigations with the impending arrival of the Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology (Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forensica-EAAF).
In a previous release, the team was described as “one of the world’s foremost agencies in forensic anthropology and is said to have conducted investigations on many “high profile” cases around the world.
The team will include a forensic pathologist, a forensic anthropologist and a forensic radiologist and will also bring along with them the equipment they need.
The mutilated bodies of Joel and Isaiah Henry were found back on September 6, in clumps of bushes near to a coconut estate located at Cotton Tree Backdam, West Coast Berbice, Region Five.
Protests marred by violence had erupted over the news of their gruesome murder and days later, the body of another teen, Haresh Singh was found, lying in a patch of grass and bleeding from the nose at the Number Three Village Backdam.
Singh was later pronounced dead at a hospital and was identified as the grandson of one of the suspects, a rice farmer, who was in police custody at the time for the murder of the Henry boys.
These protests had lasted for days and had affected businesses and left numerous commuters stranded – some for hours and others for days.