– say mistaken identity avenue remains open
It has been almost a year since 27-year-old Navin Serrao was killed in a drive-by shooting at Thomas Lands, George-town and even as the police have run out of leads, a top ranking officer says the case of seeming mistaken identity remains open.
On the night of June 7, the former Hadfield Street resident, was driving his friend’s Toyota 212 car. He had just picked up the friend’s mother from her home in Kitty and was driving West along Thomas Lands.
A car, still unidentified up to today, drove alongside him and gunmen started pumping bullets at Serrao. This was around 8.50 pm. He died from several gunshot wounds to his head, neck, hands, arms and chest.
Mere days after the killing, acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene had commented that he believed it might be linked to some drug deal. Greene’s comments had left Serrao’s relatives furious and they had insisted that the police should do thorough investigations before making such pronouncements.
In recent telephone interview, a top-ranking member of the force told this newspaper that the police, “ran out of leads” in this case, but that it was still pretty much open.
However, the source revealed to this newspaper that the owner of the car which Serrao was driving that fateful night, “had problems with persons and so we went along those lines in our investigations but we did not come up with anything of evidential value.”
The officer said the police believed the bullets might not have been meant for Serrao and so diagnosed the case as one likely to be one of mistaken identity. He said all the leads the police were working with have been exhausted and though many persons were questioned in relation to the killing but there has never been enough evidence to lay charges against anyone.
No answers
The memory of the man’s killing is fresh in the minds of those who were closest to him. During an interview with this newspaper, his sister Rihanna Moore, who also acted as his custodian from childhood, could not control her tears. It was as though the incident happened only yesterday.
Asked whether the family had heard anything about any progress in investigations, Moore told Stabroek News, “we have gotten no answers and we don’t know anything because we have no kind of information as to who killed my brother.” She said the family had been told that the police were still conducting investigations.
Recounting the night her brother was killed, Moore said she had received some money from her mother for her daughter’s birthday and was heading to he internet café to call her mother to say thanks. She had taken her children to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. She said she knew Navin was in Sandy Babb Street, Kitty with his friends, since he had spoken to her earlier that night.
She said it was around 9.30 pm that she received a call informing her of her brother’s demise.
Accepting the way Serrao died has been hardest for his family, his sister said, even as they refuse to point fingers at anyone. “We don’t have any evidence who did it and I feel this is why the police too could not have come up with anything,” she said. But she said she remained hopeful that solving the case would be a priority for the police.
In the meanwhile, Moore said, she has put her trust in God and that He would bring her and her family the justice they deserve. “We are leaving everything to him.”
She said her mother has since been forced to return to Guyana since the death has been hard for her to bear.
“Every day we still cry the grief is still pretty much fresh in our hearts. He was very close to me. He was like my child. A day hasn’t passed without tears in this house. He was such a jovial person and we really miss him,” she said breaking into tears.
“My brother was a nice person and it’s hard for us to accept the way he died. We were not prepared for this. I mean if he had gotten into an accident and was killed that way the feeling would be different.”
Already for this year, there have been two execution-style killings, with nothing groundbreaking in investigations. On March 10, Marcyn King the sister of Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins was shot as she was walking home from work. Police had warned, following this killing, that they would not tolerate the killing of innocent persons and that all efforts would be made to arrest and prosecute the perpetrator(s) of the act.
Later in March, gunmen executed George Barton at Laing Avenue in what appeared to be a well-planned drive-by attack. Barton called ‘Burlin’, 48, lived at 34 Howes Street, Charlestown. His teenage daughter Anika Barton, who was with him at the time of the attack, sustained gunshot wounds to her right leg.
The teenager had told the media that while she and her father were walking, four men pulled up in a white car and called to him by name.
The motive for the man’s slaying could not be ascertained. Relatives had speculated that the killers might have trailed Barton from his home.
Barton entered Laing Avenue from the western end with his daughter and was only a short distance in when a white car, as described by eyewitnesses, drove up approaching from the eastern end and opened fire. This was around 8.10 pm. Barton was shot around three to four times. The car then sped off in a westerly direction.
