The police last evening confirmed that a suspect is in custody in connection with the robbery and murder of Demerara Bank employee Sheema Mangar and according to reports a car was also impounded.
When contacted yesterday, Police spokesman Superin-tendent John Sauers would only confirm that a male was in custody in connection with the crime.
Mangar, 20, was robbed of her mobile phone sometime after 6 pm Friday and she chased the perpetrator who jumped into a car and ran her down when she tried to stop him from fleeing. The woman was dragged from the Bedford Methodist Church at Camp Street and North Road to the intersection of Camp and Church streets. She died early Saturday morning at the St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital from a ruptured spleen, one of the many injuries she sustained.
The woman’s father Lalbachan Mangar had told Stabroek News on Monday that the police had indicated to the Mangar family on Saturday that they knew the car involved and that it had been used in several other robberies.
Crime Chief Seelall Persaud, according to news website Demerara Waves, said the suspect is believed to be associated with the criminal underworld and that investigators took action based on intelligence gathered. However, Persaud is also reported as saying that hard evidence was still to be found and that detectives were examining the car to find any traces of blood or residue that could allow them to conclusively link the vehicle to Mangar’s killing.
According to the news site, Persaud also dismissed theories that the man was somehow connected to the woman and might have wanted to gain access to information on her phone.
Mangar’s mother, Radica Thakoor, told Stabroek News that she had not heard the news from the police. “They nah call me as yet but me hear somebody seh they hold someone,” she said.
In an interview with Stabroek News on Monday, she had called for capital punishment for her daughter’s killer. “That man should be hanged if anybody find him. I’m not talking on behalf of just my daughter, I talking on behalf of everybody daughter as well because this could happen to other people. No one knows what I’m going through. When I close my eyes in the night I see my daughter lying in the mortuary,” Thakoor said.
Thakoor described her daughter as a loving and easygoing, adding that she was studying to become an accountant. She said Sheema had not behaved any differently in the days leading up to her death and that she could not think of a reason why someone would want her dead. “What this country turn to? For a phone? Your own phone that you work so hard for, you can’t have something you achieve in your life? What are we working for? We gotta be always thinking somebody is going to take it from us. Why we must live like that?”
According to Thakoor, “a lifetime of heartbreak” awaits her family now.
Sheema, who is survived by her parents and younger brother Jason, would have celebrated her 21st birthday next month. She will be buried tomorrow at the Good Hope Cemetery, following viewings at her church and home.
