It is appalling, relatives say, that despite having access to his reputed wife police have been unable to properly identify the dredge owner shot dead in an ambush at Mousie Landing just after midnight on Monday.

The dead man has now been correctly identified as Davindra Williams called ‘Devon’ of Mainstay, Essequibo Coast. Shortly after police issued a press release last evening, in which they requested aid in identifying the dead man, Williams’s mother identified him via a picture published in Wednesday’s edition of Stabroek News.

Since the incident, police have attached two different names to Williams and the mother of another man was traumatized after she was informed that it was her son, David Courtman, who was lying dead at the Georgetown Public Hospital mortuary.

“This is ridiculous,” Williams’s reputed wife, Julia, told Stabroek News via an interpreter last evening. “They [the police] have known who I am since the night of the incident and yet they made no attempt to speak to me through someone to translate… They did speak to me but I didn’t understand anything they said… I have been in Georgetown since the body came out here on Tuesday so they can’t say they didn’t have access to me afterwards.”

On Tuesday, in their first press release on the incident, police identified Williams as Devon Thomas of Mainstay. They reported that Williams and miner Clifford Andrews were walking along a road at Mousie Landing when they were attacked by two men. One of the attackers, according to the police, was armed with a gun.

During the incident, police had said, Williams was fatally wounded to the chest while the gunman, Oswald Bourne, was shot in the chest and back. Bourne, 31, of One Mile, Wismar, Linden died while his accomplice escaped. Andrews, who was air-dashed to the Georgetown Public Hospital on Monday, remains a patient in the Male Open Ward.

Later on Tuesday night, in a second press release, police asked that the earlier name and address (Devon Thomas of Mainstay) be disregarded. Instead, they reported, the dead dredge owner had been identified as Devon Courtman of Richmond, Essequibo Coast.

In Wednesday’s editions of the Kaieteur News and Guyana Times Williams was identified as David Courtman and they both carried pictures of Courtman. Guyana Times had reported that it spoke with Theresa Courtman his mother: “The mother of six said she received a phone call from a police rank, at around noon on Tuesday, stating that a David, who is suspected to be her son, had been shot at Mahdia. The rank described the person, and she realised it was indeed her son.”

When the distressed Theresa showed up in Georgetown for the autopsy on Wednesday it

was to see a stranger lying in the mortuary. When Stabroek News contacted the Courtmans late Wednesday night they declined to comment but lambasted earlier media reports.

“Listen we ain’t got nothing to say,” David Courtman’s foster father said. “Y’all media people is bare problems… Y’all got me wife almost dead with news that she son dead and next thing you know is not she son… Y’all must get y’all story right.”

Earlier on Wednesday Julia had visited Stabroek News’ Robb Street office and said that she did not know the man whose photograph had appeared in the other two daily editions. She had insisted that David Courtman was not the dead man.

“Listen, you people think I won’t know my own husband,” an upset Julia had told Stabroek News later when questioned about whether she was sure it was Williams who had died. “I know my husband… that is my husband dead in there and I don’t know which poor man mother they distressing… Then there are also the newspapers. How can they just run with information like that? Don’t they check or investigate anything? Suppose they had told that David man’s mother about his death and then the woman had a heart attack or something?”

What really happened
It is still unclear what happened at Mousie Landing that night. There have been varying accounts of the incident and Julia says that she is not confident in the police’s skill to investigate.

In one version, told by the injured miner Andrews, they were ambushed by Bourne and his accomplice and Bourne and Williams had exchanged gunfire. Andrews had said he believed that it was during the shooting that the second man escaped. However, a police source had since said that Andrews had changed his story.

This newspaper has been unable to speak with the man since.

Then there is the version supplied by Bourne’s brother, Carl, who alleged that the incident stemmed from a confrontation between his deceased sibling and the injured Andrews. Carl had reported that two Sundays ago Bourne found Andrews in his Mousie Landing yard and this led to a confrontation between them.

His brother, Carl had said, next saw Andrews at a shop with Williams on the night of the incident. Reports reaching him, Carl alleged, said that Andrews told Williams that Bourne had slapped him and then the two of them followed his brother (Bourne) and his friend (who police have dubbed the second accomplice) out of the shop.

Stabroek News had also learnt from a police source that Williams had been robbed of a quantity of gold. However, this has since been refuted by Julia. The woman said her reputed husband did not leave their camp with any gold. Williams, according to her, only had a silver chain, a quantity of cash and a wrist watch on him that night. These items along with his long boots went missing, she said.

Meanwhile, late Tuesday night police arrested the brother of the surviving attacker. The man remained in police custody up to late yesterday afternoon assisting with investigations.