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Questions still linger 16 years after shooting death of KN pressmen
Kaieteur News – Yesterday marked 16 years since a marauding gang of vicious, misguided and illiterate youths stormed the Eccles, East Bank Demerara printery of this newspaper and slaughtered five of our co-workers.
Chetram Persaud, Eion Wegman, Richard Stewart, Mark Maikoo and Shazeem Mohamed were all placed to lie down and shot at point blank range to the back of their heads.
With still many questions unanswered, the callous shooting incident back in 2006 remains a haunting memory that lingers in the minds of several longstanding Kaieteur News staff members – especially publisher, Glenn Lall.
The men –Persaud, of 76 CC Eccles, East Bank Demerara; Wegman, 47, of 51 Fourth Street, Alberttown, Georgetown; Stewart, 24, of 239 Lamaha Park, East La Penitence, Georgetown; Maikoo, 22, of 5 Yarrow Dam, La Penitence, Georgetown, and Mohamed of 267 BB Eccles, East Bank Demerara – were cold bloodedly slain on Tuesday, August 8, 2006 at the Kaieteur News printing facility at Eccles Industrial Site.
Another worker, Wordsworth Grey, of 31 Norton Street, Bagotstown, East Bank Demerara, was shot dead shortly before the killers stormed the printery. Senior pressman Ramchand Harripersaud and security guard Julian De Grace were the only survivors of the massacre. In February of 2013, one of the men accused of killing the five pressmen was freed. This newspaper was told that Dwight DaSilva, one of three who were accused, was freed of the murder charge for lack of evidence. DaSilva, along with Quincy Evans and Jermaine Charles called ‘Skinny’ (deceased), were charged for the murders of Wegman, Stuart, Maikoo, Mohamed and Persaud. Evans was previously freed in the Magistrate’s court while Charles was killed in a shootout with police after he had escaped from custody.
DaSilva was also freed in the case of Caneville businessman Barbot Paul back in June 2012. Problems with the identification evidence of a 16-year-old girl, whose description of a murder accused rested on the words “a tall dark man” and “a short brown man” resulted in murder accused DaSilva being freed on a no-case submission.
Businessman Barbot Paul was murdered on August 6, 2006. DaSilva was accused of entering the business premises at Grove, EBD along with other gunmen and killed Paul in a robbery bid.
Paul’s wife, Latifan, who had seen the shooting, did not identify the gunman, but her grand-daughter, Nazeema Persaud, who at first gave the impression that she had identified the accused as a person she used to see when she visited her mother at Glasgow, East Bank Berbice, told the jury that the only information she had about the men was “that one was “tall and dark” and the other was “short and brown”. Those features fitted a number of persons, including the defence counsel and two members of the jury, the girl explained under cross-examination.
The accused who was represented by Attorney-at-Law George Thomas, pleaded not guilty to the crime.
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