– had been hiding in Timehri community for weeks
The notorious Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins and Jermaine ‘Skinny’ Charles might have suspected that their accomplice Seon Grant had informed the joint services about their movements and killed him hours before they were cut down in their last standoff with the lawmen, sources told this newspaper.
Residents in the Timehri Squatting Area also recollected yesterday that they had been seeing Rawlins and Charles in the area for about two weeks, but that the men kept a low profile. Residents told this newspaper that they saw the men intermittently but that newspaper photographs and descriptions, particularly of Rawlins, were not helpful since his physical appearance was different and his facial features more mature.
Charles, they said, was somehow hard to recognise even though he looked the same as in published photographs.
One resident remembered encountering the two men not far from his home one morning more than a week ago. He said he was on his way to work when the two men, who were drinking bottles of Guinness at a street corner, stopped him. They seemed rather friendly. He said one of them who he now knows was Rawlins, was wearing a hat which hid part of his face. Rawlins, he said, offered him a Guinness. “I tell he no because I was going to work and I can’t go to work high. Then they ask me if I was a police and I said no and I told them where I work,” the man said.
He said he never saw the men again and had no idea where they were from, but figured that they were new to the community. However, he recalled that some time before then, his wife had told him that two strange men had thrown compliments at her and persons on the road at the time had teased her about knowing the men.
The man said even though there were many rumours that the wanted men had been somewhere in the Timehri area for some time now, everyone ignored the talk. “After I hear the rumour, I didn’t really take it for anything because I know we are so close to the police station plus an army base and I didn’t think that criminals would want to hide here,” he said.
Seon Grant aka
‘Short man’
According to him, Grant who was known in the community as ‘Short man’ had lived there for some time at a resident’s home. However, he subsequently left and had not been seen for a while, returning recently with his pregnant girlfriend in tow.
He said he had heard that Grant had moved out from his friend’s place and had been heard talking of building his own place. The resident said that the shack, which Grant later shared with Rawlins and Charles, was recently built.
The man said that an Amerindian family used to reside close to Grant’s shack, but was forced to vacate the area after family members began having problems with Grant, who had attacked one of them.
Grant, he said, had always had a cutlass in his hand, but apart from the attack on the Amerindian person, never interfered with anyone.
The man said no one knew Grant’s girlfriend. The residents called her ‘Short man girl.’ However, he said he had heard talk around the community that several persons had accused her of stealing clothing from the clothes lines in their yards.
He told this newspaper that Grant’s girlfriend somehow managed to escape the ordeal unhurt and seemingly unhindered by her condition. According to him, she had arrived at a neighbour’s house at the front of the community, moments after the shooting and had asked for some clothing and money to travel to the city, and that was the last the residents had seen of her. That neighbour was reportedly arrested and questioned by police.
The man went on to tell Stabroek News that other residents were surprised that she had managed to get to the front of the community so quickly after the shooting.
The resident said he was told that Grant had fallen asleep at a friend’s house where he would often go to watch television and had been making his way home when he was shot.
According to him, it would appear that the man was shot outside his home as his girlfriend had told the neighbour that she had heard footsteps in the yard but got no response when she called out.
He said no one suspected that Grant was harbouring anyone at his home since he always purchased small quantities of commodities.
Another Timehri resident, recounting the events of Thursday morning, told Stabroek News that around 5 am, he was awakened by gunshots but paid no heed as it sounded as though they were coming from the military base located some distance away, where, as part of practice sessions, gunshots were occasionally heard. He said some time elapsed and he realized that further shots sounded as though they were closer to his home. He looked out and he saw “soldier vehicles speeding down to the back.”
Shortly after that, the resident said, the soldiers brought out a body that he later learnt was Grant’s. The resident said he heard no more shots after that.
Another man, who said he knew Grant as someone who planted greens in the farmlands aback of the community, told Stabroek News that he had heard the gunfire on the morning of the incident but had no idea where it was coming from. He was however quick to point out that he hardly ventured into that area because of the distance from his home and the rough, bushy terrain he would have to negotiate.
The man said that he did not know the exact location of the shack that Grant shared with his girlfriend. According to him, several persons plant in the farmlands.
Well informed
A source told Stabroek News that Grant had been a source of information for the lawmen. When the joint services made public the slaying of the two men, they said their move had been based on a tip-off. They did not say how soon they acted on the information they received.
A reliable source told Stabroek News that Grant, Rawlins and Charles had been friends for a long time in their home village of Agricola. They had spent much time together before the joint services began to up the tempo in their quest for the men. Then there had been a falling out between Grant and Rawlins after Rawlins became suspicious that Grant had ‘snitched’ on him, the source said.
However, following Rawlins’s successful escape from the lawmen at Christmas Falls and his subsequent linking up with Charles about a month ago, contact had been made with Grant through an emissary and he subsequently agreed to house the men.
The source, who spoke on the basis of anonymity, said though there were no recent police or imprisonment records for Grant, he was a “known character” and was also known to have been in frequent company with members of the notorious Buxton/Agricola gang.
Another source said that on the morning of the shooting Rawlins and Charles might have thought that Grant was acting suspiciously and they were the ones responsible for killing him.
The source said that there was an initial burst of gunfire, and it was some time after that the army arrived and approached Grant’s shack with robust gunfire. The assumption was, therefore, that Grant was killed in the first burst of fire and his body was lying outside when the army came, while Rawlins and Charles had already left the Timehri Squatting area.
Taking approximately two hours to reach Kuru Kururu on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway, the men tried to seek safe haven in the sandpit area, which they accessed after crossing the highway.
They fled about a mile into the community, and took refuge in a half-finished structure, where they were cornered by the joint services. Stabroek News understands that after cordoning off the building, there was an exchange of gunfire, but Rawlins and Charles were outnumbered and shot dead. This was more than five hours after Grant had been killed.
Moments after the killings, residents in Kuru Kururu who live some way away from the scene were open in their recollections of what they heard and saw that morning, but were unable to give detailed accounts because they were too far away. Persons living closer to the sand pit area where the men met their demise were tight-lipped on the incident.
The squatting area, which is still under development with many unfinished homes, was quiet when this newspaper visited. Residents would only point to the area where the structure in which Rawlins and Charles met their end was located some distance away, bordered by swamp and thick bushes. They said one could access the Kuru Kururu area from where the Timehri shack is in about two hours by using trails, notwithstanding the thick jungle and swampy land around.
At a press conference called hours after the dramatic events, Acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene said that acting upon information received at about 5.45 am, two teams from the Joint Services Operation Group and the Guyana Defence Force Special Force along with members of the Special Forces proceeded to an area in Timehri about 500 metres east of the GDF ammunition dump. There, they came under fire from shooters in an identifiable house.
According to Greene, in that first confrontation, GDF Corporal Cush was shot in his right hand. He said ranks returned fire and saw three men running from the house. When they descended on the scene they found the body of a man who was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) where he was pronounced dead on arrival. The man was identified as Grant. Ranks then continued their search for the other men.
The two men ended up in Kuru Kururu at a place villagers call Kakabura and at about 12.45 pm, police said the team came under fire from a small unfinished concrete structure. There was an exchange of gunfire and two men, later identified as Rawlins and Charles were killed.