Police have matched the spent shells found at the scene of the attack on the East La Penitence station on Tuesday night to those found at the scenes of the Lusignan and Bartica murders, providing for the first time a link between the two massacres.
In a press release issued last night, the force said, ballistics tests carried out on the twenty-three 7.62×39 spent shells recovered from East La Penitence revealed they were from rounds fired from two firearms and that the shells further matched those found that the scenes at Lusignan and Bartica.
The results also linked the shells to a robbery/murder at Canal Number 2, West Bank Demerara during 2006, the release added, and investigations are ongoing into the attack on the station.
Prior to this, there had been no police statement in relation to ballistics evidence linking the Lusignan killings – thought to be the work of the Buxton/Agricola gunmen – to those at Bartica in February. However, President Bharrat Jagdeo had taken the leap in announcing two days after 12 persons were killed in Bartica that the murderers were the same men who had slaughtered 11 people at Lusignan in January. Jagdeo later repeated the statement that the two killings were linked.
The only official ballistics evidence of the Bartica slaughter previously provided was by Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee in the National Assembly in March. Contrary to what Jagdeo had said earlier, Rohee announced that ballistics tests conducted on spent shells found at the crime scene at Bartica firmly established that the same weapons had been used to commit killings and robberies at three other locations last year, namely, Better Hope on August 21, 2007; Sheribana on October 1, 2007 and at Triumph on December 16, 2007. He did not mention the Lusignan slayings of January 26, 2008.
When asked about the contradiction between his comments and those of Rohee, Jagdeo had said that the minister perhaps inadvertently omitted to mention the Lusignan-Bartica connection, and insisted that the two incidents were linked.
Questions have been raised over the credibility of the police ballistics results in the past and detractors have further argued that despite the presentation of the information the police have been unable to use it in capturing criminals and winning prosecutions in court.
On Tuesday night, the shooters left several bullet holes on the outer walls of the station, located on Mandela Avenue.
When Stabroek News visited the station several police officers were there, but were unwilling to speak about the incident. Stabroek News was told that the gunmen attacked the station from both the eastern and southern ends.
A taxi driver told this newspaper that he was on Mandela Avenue in that area, when he heard rapid gunfire. The taxi driver, who asked not be named, said he and several of his colleagues from the same service, immediately came off the road.
He said he was not certain where the gunfire was coming from and could not imagine it was an attack on the police station.
A security guard at a building next door to the station said she was in the guard hut when she heard the gunshots and fearing for her life, she stayed in. “I ain’t going out there to see anything,” the guard commented. She said when the shooting subsided and she went outside to have a look, she saw some police officers frantically looking around.
Over the years, gunmen have routinely targeted police stations on their way to committing serious atrocities, as happened in the January and February slaughters at Lusignan and Bartica.
