On New Year’s Eve, a Grove man chased his younger sister and daughter from the street corner where they had been drinking and smoking. Minutes later, he was attacked and chopped repeatedly about the body by the girls’ boyfriends.
Joseph Clement Batson, 34, of Saran Street, Grove, East Bank Demerara, sustained chops to the right cheek, head, back and legs. Last Friday, doctors at the East Bank Demerara Regional Hospital carefully stitched Batson more than 100 times to mend the wounds about his body.
Since the incident, which occurred some time between 9.30 pm and 10 pm on Friday, police have not arrested the alleged perpetrators. Relatives of the injured man are insisting that ranks at the Grove Police Station know who the men are but have made no move to take them into custody.
Stabroek News was unable to reach police for a comment on the case.
At his Saran Street home, where he lives with his parents, Joseph was resting in a hammock yesterday. He was unable to move around much or talk. Anita Batson said that her brother was walking through their street that night when he saw his 14-year-old daughter and their 15-year-old sister at the street corner. A barbecue and lime was being held at the street corner to celebrate the coming New Year, she said. “She [Joseph’s daughter] and our little sister been at the road corner drinking beers so when he see them he start to run them…. Normally, he does run his daughter home where she use to live with she mother but now she does live with she man,” Anita explained.
It was around 8.30 pm when Joseph saw the teenagers and chased them from the liming spot. He returned to the party later and was dancing when their boyfriends, said to be in their late teens, entered the area. “We all been at the barbecue and all I see is this boy [her sister’s boyfriend] come with a cutlass in his hand and he didn’t ask anyone anything. Just start fire chop,” Anita recalled. “And later on the red boy with him hold my brother so he could get to chop him,” she added.
As several dozen witnesses watched, Dennis Batson said, his youngest daughter’s boyfriend attacked his son, Joseph. The man chopped Joseph once, Dennis related, and then the injured man ran around a table. It was at this point that “the red boy” held on to Joseph so that his friend could chop the man. “Is my daughter-in-law’s son had to go and hold he [the attacker] and take away the cutlass…after that he and the red boy just lef’ the barbecue,” Dennis said.
Difficulties with police
The attack, according to Dennis, was reported to ranks at the Grove Police Station the same night. However, when they arrived at the station police told them that they had no vehicles available and that they would visit the scene shortly. A report was taken by an officer and logged in the station book. But up to yesterday, police had not taken a statement from Joseph or any of the witnesses present when the attack occurred.
The two attackers, the man said, have also not been arrested. Dennis pointed the teenagers out to Stabroek News yesterday. At the time, the teens were playing a game of cricket a short distance from his house. “You see what happening in this place? Look they right there and the police pass them up to this morning and hail them up and still they na arrest them,” Dennis said.
Dennis said his 15-year-old daughter was subsequently located and taken to the station on Friday night. But after speaking with the girl, the station sergeant stated that she did not know anything about the attack on her brother Joseph and she was subsequently released.
Meanwhile, the injured man’s mother Angela Samaroo said that after the attack on her son she went to the house of the “red boy” to complain to his mother and he threatened her.
The woman said that when she returned to the Grove Police Station to report the matter, she was treated in an unprofessional way by police. “It na matter how much time I go to that station that night to complain to police, they na have no right to treat anybody like that,” the woman stated.
Endless trouble
Samaroo said that for more than two years, both her youngest daughter and her 14-year-old granddaughter have been giving the family endless trouble. Early last year, according to Samaroo, Joseph had taken his daughter to court for skulking from school and engaging in “bad” activities.
Later, Samaroo took her granddaughter to the probation and welfare department of the Ministry of Human Services. Probation officers, the woman recalled, had counselled the child and taken her to a doctor to be medically examined.
Since then, the probation department has shown no interest in her grandchild’s case and the situation has deteriorated. The 14-year-old, according to Samaroo, moved out of her mother’s home and is now living with her boyfriend. “Is somebody send me to that ministry,” Samaroo said. “After things de getting more and more bad with she, I decide to go there for help but it hard to get help in this place.”
Some time last year, Samaroo further said, anti-narcotic officers had caught her daughter and other friends with marijuana. The youths were taken to the Grove station but were later released. “That is always the tune with the police,” the woman said, “They always never can’t do nothing. Nobody never can’t do nothing in this place that name Guyana.”
