The man known simply as `American’ or `Yankee’ and who died in the explosion outside of Stabroek Market on Wednesday remains a figure of mystery and has been described as a favourite of vendors.
Stabroek Market vendors knew the deceased `American’ as an honest and hard working `smokie’. The man, one vendor said, cleaned the area around her stall every morning for a fee.
“He was a serious kinda a junkie you know. He neva used to say nothing much or gaff gaff with nobody,” she said.
Another homeless man, who slept behind the Stabroek Market area with `American’, told this newspaper that the man, like himself, was a “deportee”. American, according to him, was also called `Yankee’.
“They call me `Yankee’ too,” the man told Stabroek News. “I guess that is the nickname for any deportee that come back around these parts.”
`American’, the man said, had been around the market area for less than five years. The man, he explained, was a favourite of many vendors because he was a very honest man. “When some of the vendors wanted to sleep they would call on `American’ to watch their stalls. Many of them wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it,” the man explained.
`American’, according to him, hardly spoke of his life before the market and no one knew his real name.
“I don’t even know which part of Guyana he was from…he never used to tell us anything. The most you would hear is when he was muttering to himself,” the man said.
Explosion
This is not the first time police have discovered the type of grenade that exploded at the Stabroek Market area on Wednesday morning, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud has said.
Assistant Commissioner Persaud, speaking with Stabroek News briefly via telephone yesterday, said that police found the same type of fragmentation grenade in Linden late last year. He explained that the grenade was found in the cache of ammunition discovered by police when Colin Jones was arrested. The explosive is a fragmentation grenade.
When asked whether the armed forces used the same model of grenade the Crime Chief said that it was sensitive information which he would not release to the public. In recent years, he said, several of these grenades have been discovered. At the time Persaud was unable to give a time period within which these grenades were discovered or to say how many have been found.
Persaud said that police were not aware of any local illegal source from which these explosive devices could be coming.
Shortly after 10.30am on Wednesday the grenade was detonated at the Brickdam and Cornhill Street location. The explosion killed “American” and injured 18 other persons. American, had not been formally identified up to press time.
Sources, including former members of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), have told this newspaper that there is a local supplier for the type of grenade. The grenades, one source explained, is most likely coming to Guyana from Brazil. “American”, some sources believe, worked as a messenger/delivery man for the suppliers of these explosives.
At a press conference on Wednesday evening Commissioner of Police Henry Greene said that police are probing the theory that the deceased was the courier of illegal arms and other substances. The deceased was found with his left hand blown off and his face partly damaged.
Further in a press statement police said parts of a fragmentation grenade had been recovered by the team of investigators which included police explosives experts and it is believed that “American” was holding it in his hand at the time of the explosion. The pin or the lever from the grenade has still not been located.
However, one source informed this newspaper that the fragments which police discovered are that of a M9 High-explosive Dual-purpose grenade. The GDF, according to the source, uses the M76 grenade.
The evidence in the possession of police, the source said, is a clear indication that an entity is bringing another type of grenade into the country. It is not possible, the source insisted, that the explosive was stolen from any “legal local source”.
Meanwhile, the crime chief also said that the owner of the stall where the explosion occurred, Mark Hyman, was taken into police custody hours after the incident. The man, Persaud said, remained in custody yesterday assisting with investigations.
Stabroek: the
meeting place
When `American’ reportedly detonated the grenade on Wednesday morning hundreds of commuters, minibus operators, vendors and businessmen and women from around the country were moving about.
At 10.30 on any morning from Monday to Saturday, citizens told Stabroek News, the area is always crowded. The Stabroek Market, one minibus driver said, is the meeting place of Guyanese from all over the country.
“If you go and ask around right now,” the man said, “you going to find people from West Demerara, Linden, Essequibo, Berbice and so out here and if you go around where the gold sellers does be under the clock you going to find people from the bush (interior) out here too. Everybody does come here to do business.”
On the morning of the explosion, he said, many people were going about their business and it was more than shocking when the explosion occurred. The glass from a nearby food stall, he said, cracked after the explosion.
“If I tell you,” a businesswoman told this newspaper, “I don’t want think about what coulda happen out here. Suppose that man de come and stand up in the middle of the road with that thing I sure it woulda been more serious.”
When this newspaper revisited the scene yesterday morning at 10.30 Guyanese were still going about their usual activities. However, the area where Hyman’s stall had been was barricaded and there was a stronger police presence.
“You ain’t see how naked the place look?” June Ann Solomon asked. “Dem clean up the vendors and all after de thing blow up.”
Solomon was sitting in a Guyhoc Park minibus (route 41) when the grenade exploded on Wednesday morning. The bus, she explained, was parked in the lot just behind the stall where the incident occurred.
“When this thing go off is like ah lef stupid and ah feel like de bus move…me nah feel is imagine ah imagine this thing…de bus move when de thing blow up,” Solomon insisted.
The woman said that after the sound and “vibration” she remained sitting in the vehicle even as other persons scrambled to get out. “Meh mother always does tell me that when thing happen ah mustn’t go on de frontline so ah stay right where I been,” she said.
Solomon, who is in her late 40s, said that this was the first time she could remember something like this happening. The Guyana she remembers as a little girl and as a young woman growing up, she said, has turned into something very scary.
“Sometime ah does sit and wonder if this is de same place where ah born. Meh never think that something woulda blow up here in true true God life…dem is things we does normally watch pon TV,” she said.
Other persons, who work in a nearby business place, told Stabroek News that they were busy tending to customers when they heard the sound. “We thought it was a GPL transformer explode…and by this place sealed up we couldn’t really hear the fullness of the sound,”
