‘I want to see the law prove it…I’m still
living with a question mark in my head’
By Gaulbert Sutherland
It is noisy now; vehicles speed down the Avenue and miners, vendors, workers and residents mingle in a cacophony of sound. But one night several months ago, the sound of gunshots took command and at the end 12 persons lay dead leaving a stunned community reeling.
Late last month, the name of the man accused of masterminding the attack was again on the lips of everyone. He had been killed; shot dead by security forces as he unsuccessfully attempted to flee. His death left many relieved.
There are mixed emotions too as some believe that sooner or later, another will rise to continue an orgy of violence in Guyana. And the scars, the fears, the tears remain for relatives of those killed in the February 17 Bartica Massacre.
Edwin Gilkes, 47, a security guard at the Banks DIH outlet at First Avenue, Bar-tica, located close to the community’s Police Station was probably the fourth person to die in the attack. Three policemen had moments before been shot dead in the police station.
Rondell ‘Fineman’ Rawlins, 32, a notorious criminal, on whose head was placed the largest bounty ever offered for one man in the country’s history was fingered as being the mastermind of the attack. He was shot dead by the Joint Services on August 28.
“I din feel no way”, Agnes Gilkes said, recalling her emotions at the time of Rawlins death. The sister of Edwin Gilkes added “I don’t think and I don’t feel certain that is ‘Fineman’ kill my brother nor his gang”.
Irving Ferreira, 72, was a security guard too. On February 17, he was killed, shot in the head while trying to hide in a freezer. Ferreira called his reputed wife of 41 years, Norma Valentine three times that night. “It seemed strange to me, when we go out he doan normally call that often”, she said.
Yvette Skeete, another sister of Edwin felt relieved when Rawlins was killed. “Fineman’ was killed because he deserved to be killed”, she stated adding that rumours that he was in the area had kept everyone on edge.
Through it all, there are fears that somewhere, sometime in the future criminals will strike again. “It will happen again…sooner or later they will strike again”, Agnes said, “I know they will strike, cause there are still criminals out there”.
“He (Rawlins) might be the head for the gang, but there must be a headman upstairs… it gotta be somebody who heading this thing…it gotta be somebody in high place who backing this thing”, Valentine asserted.
“In the future, whenever you hear another rumour, it would be the name of somebody else”, Skeete declared.
On the night of the killings, Valentine said, she did not sleep. She feels relieved at Rawlins’ death but would feel more relieved if the rest of the gang was caught. She says that she tries to cope and the “memories are still fresh…I remember everything”.
Skeete says that she still hurts a lot and at times, finds herself crying. “I still feel a little satisfaction that Fineman was removed from the face of the earth”, she commented. One point that is raised by her and her sister is the need for the rest of the gang to be brought to justice. “I want to see the law prove it…I’m still living with a question mark in my head”, one says. Following the massacre, it was stated that for the gunmen to make such a clean getaway, there must have been help from within the community. A lot of people who help the gang are still on the loose and “the police know”, one says.
Agnes is very outspoken. She said that when Rawlins was killed, she considered it “just another murder” and said that nothing had been proven, that pinned Rawlins or his gang to the crime. When the results of police ballistics tests were raised, she said “I am tired of hearing that story; they always link some weapon somewhere”. “To me they just find a scarecrow to just put the blame pon”, she adds making reference to reports of the sizes, build and ethnicity of the gang that invaded the town that night.
She noted that she would appreciate if the persons who killed her brother be brought to justice, ‘”I don’t think the police should kill them, they should bring them to justice”.
But there must be more. “They need to destroy the criminals from the roots, how long they ain’t destroy it from the root, they will still come again”. She believes too that there is more to what is being said. “They created it from the start and the criminals get out of hand more than they expected”. Who are ‘they’? “People in high brackets, people in authority”.
Like other relatives, she and her sister miss their brother every day and it seems as though the incident has just happened. “I wish they could find the right perpetrators… bring them to justice…only God can do that job”, she said.