Chaos descended upon the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court yesterday morning when a 19-year-old charged with murdering 11 people at Lusignan, East Coast Demerara (ECD) on January 26 appeared before Principal Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle.
James Anthony Hyles, called ‘Sally’, of 70 Friendship, ECD was not required to plead to the 11 indictable counts of murder.
Long before Hyles arrived at the court, his family, relatives and friends were outside the compound loudly decrying what they said was “an injustice”. Passers-by were alerted to the group’s presence as Hyles’s mother continually let out high pitched shrieks as she stood on the Avenue of the Republic sidewalk just outside the court.
The woman, Hyles’s sisters and other relatives condemned the actions of the police and made threats against members of the Guyana Police Force in general and the officer who was responsible for Hyles’s arrest.
As Magistrate Robertson-Ogle prepared to read the charge, there was an unusual silence in the courtroom.
Hyles sat slumped forward and made barely noticeable left-to-right movements with his head as if to deny the allegations being made against him. His eyes were red and puffed from crying.
The magistrate then began to read the charge, but got no further than the fourth victim’s name when chaos suddenly erupted. Hyles’s relatives began crying out loudly in the courtroom. His mother, grief stricken, threw herself to the floor and had to be consoled by her husband. Other relatives were behaving similarly and some were seen swiftly leaving the court, sobbing as they went.
The magistrate left the bench and returned to her chambers after the first shriek erupted while the prosecutor took the precaution of protecting the case file.
Hyles was then temporarily removed from the court room and additional police officers were immediately summoned to further secure Court One and return it to its former calm.
The magistrate then returned to the bench and Hyles was taken back to the docks and the charges finally read to him. He was charged with the murders of 48-year-old Clarence Thomas, his 12-year-old daughter Vanessa Thomas and his son Ron Thomas; 32-year-old Mohandai Gourdat and her two sons four-year-old Seegobind Harrilall and ten-year-old Seegopaul Harrilall; 22-year-old Shazam Mohamed; 55-year-old Shaleem Baksh; and Seecharran Rooplall, 56, his wife, Dhanrajie Ramsingh, 52, and their 11-year-old daughter, Raywattie Ramsingh.
He was remanded to prison and the case was transferred to the Vigilance Magistrate’s Court for February 28.
However, this was far from the end of the matter for the day as relatives stood outside the court weeping.
As Hyles was escorted to the waiting prison vehicle to be transported back to prison, the shrieks escalated in volume and one relative had to be physically restrained as she attempted to grab hold of the vehicle as it moved off.
Another female relative ran barefoot behind the vehicle, shouting. She pursued the vehicle a few yards up Brickdam before abandoning her chase, as passers-by looked on.
Hyles is the first person charged in the January 26 carnage, in which a gang of some 20 gunmen stormed into Tract ‘A’ Lusignan Pasture and slaughtered 11 people, including five children in a 20-minute blitz.
The bloody massacre left hundreds of residents angry and shocked and for a few days after, there were street protests in which tyres were burnt and some infrastructure destroyed as villagers called on the security forces to protect them. The police had been summoned once the gunshots started but never arrived on the scene until some one and a half hours later.
The killings at Lusignan had come mere hours after gunmen in a car attacked Police Headquarters Eve Leary in an astonishingly brazen manner. Observers believe that that assault was a diversionary ploy to focus the security forces’ attention in the city while the criminals created terror on the East Coast.
Prior to the slaughter, there had been reports from the police that a man purporting to be Guyana’s number one fugitive Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins had contacted ranks at the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters on Wednesday threatening to create mayhem if teenager Tenisha Morgan, alleged to be the mother of his unborn child, who went missing several weeks ago was not returned safely. To date Morgan has not been found nor have the police captured Rawlins despite having offered a $50 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Since then, the same group of gunmen is believed to have participated in the February 17 massacre at Bartica.
