No provisions have been made by police to secure the crime scene at the George Street house in which Jamal Beete’s body was discovered on Saturday afternoon.
When Stabroek News revisited the area yesterday the front door leading to the house’s second floor was slightly ajar. Residents told this newspaper that since police visited the crime scene shortly after the body was found they have not returned. The door, according to residents, was left open since Saturday.
“Even if they have processed the crime scene,” a police source said last evening, “they should have secured the area…in such cases there is no telling what evidence could have been overlooked during the first examination. Now if they have to revisit the scene the information they get after that will be useless because there is no telling whether someone would’ve tampered with the scene.”
At about 4 pm that day Beete’s body was discovered on the floor with a pillow lying a short distance away. It is suspected that the pillow may have been used as silencer since residents did not report hearing a gunshot. Beete, relatives said, had a single gunshot wound to the head.
“He was standing when they shot him…we could see the blood splatters on the wall and his body was still warm when we got there after we got the news so he couldn’t ah been shot too long ago…,” Beete’s sister, Malika told Stabroek News during a telephone interview yesterday.
Initial reports had suggested that Beete may have been mistaken for his younger brother Tyrone `Cobra’ Rowe who is currently wanted by police. However, Malika, like her mother, insists that Beete’s murder was not a case of mistaken identity since the two brothers look nothing alike.
“He (Rowe) is only 17 years old and I don’t see how they could mix he up with a 26-year-old man,” Malika stated.
Meanwhile, the woman said that police visited her mother at their Albouystown home at about 4 pm yesterday to inform them that an autopsy would be conducted on Beete’s body this morning.
“That is all they tell us…they said nothing else about if they were investigating my brother’s murder or if they’ve found anything…imagine they didn’t even have two kind words to say to my mother,” the distressed woman said.
While they do not think that Beete was mistaken for Rowe, Malika said, it is their belief that his murderer was questioning him about his younger brother’s whereabouts. Beete, she insisted, did not have the kind of enemies who would want him dead.
Two Sundays ago, according to Malika, her brother had been involved in a “misunderstanding” with a teen over a gold chain. Beete, she said, had attended a “Passa-passa dance”. While there he and the teen started arguing and the boy’s chain was lost during the confrontation. Her brother, she explained, was accused of taking it.
“To avoid trouble my mother insisted that he (Beete) pay for the chain,” Malika recalled. “But I don’t think those two boys would want to hurt him.”
His girlfriend Wanday Lawrence, who lives in Leopold Street not far away from the George Street house, said that up to last Friday night she’d been encouraging him to take their two-year-old son to live with him but he told her no because “he got nuff enemy that want kill he”. Lawrence last had contact with Beete at about 10 am on Saturday when he left her Leopold Street home and told her he was going to visit some friends.
It is unclear what happened to Beete after he left the Leopold Street location. It is strange, Malika said, that George Street residents do not recall seeing her brother enter the house or heard anything.
“I can’t even tell you who discovered him dead in that house and we still don’t know who own it,” she said. “He never knew anybody living there …it got to be that somebody kidnap he and took him there because they know the place would be empty.”
Her mother, Malika said, is still in shock since learning of Beete’s death. The family, according to Malika, had already accepted that Rowe was a wanted man.
Police had said that Rowe is believed to be the head of a gang committing gun crimes.
The Beete case is the latest addition to four earlier execution-style killings this year. Vibert Weekes and Nicholas Hoyte were riddled with bullets in January. Their deaths were followed by the execution of Mon Repos businessman Rajendra Sonilall in April and then Siwell Dexter Collins last month.