Nine of the at least 20 persons injured in Wednesday evening’s shooting at Linden remain hospitalised and some of the wounded are accusing the police of firing live rounds at them.
Three people, Ron Somerset, Alan Lewis and Shemroy Bouyea, were fatally shot after police opened fire on persons at the Wismar-Mackenzie Bridge participating in a protest over the recent hike in the electricity tariff in the town.
The police have said that they had to resort to using tear gas and they later fired shotgun cartridges, after missiles were hurled at them by protestors—an account that some of the injured continued to challenge yesterday. Hospital officials also confirmed to Stabroek News that some of those injured were hit by live rounds and others by pellets.
The most serious of those wounded are Michael Roberts, 47, of 45 Independence Avenue and Ulric Michael, 33, of 23 Canvas City, both sustained gunshot wounds, to the face and chest, respectively. Reuben Bowen, 56, of 27 Silver City, was transferred along with another patient to the Georgetown Public Hospital. Bowen sustained a gunshot wound to his left leg.
Roberts, who was in the Intensive Care Unit of the Linden Hospital Complex (LHC), told Stabroek News that he was in the compound of the Linmine Secretariat and as the police ranks advanced firing tear gas, there were two officers on the bridge who began firing live rounds, one of which struck him. Roberts was shot to the right side of his face.
Alice Shaw-Barker, who was just discharged from the institution, had wounds to both of her inner thigh that she said were caused by live rounds. “I am telling you I wasn’t hit by pellets, its bullets and the doctors confirmed that,” she said.
Shaw-Barker said that at the time that she was shot in both thighs, she was assisting a group of children off the bridge who were affected by the tear gas. “They see me fighting to helping those children and they literally shoot at me,” she said.
“When I got to the Mackenzie side of the bridge, somebody say that a man get shot so I go to the rail and I saw the man run and he drop down dead,” she recounted, adding that she turned around and saw two children, whose ages she gave as six and eight on the bridge. “So, I hold them leading them off the bridge and then I hear badam and I lean forward and a man came and he hold me up. When I look, both of my leg bleeding. One of the bullet entered in the right leg with a tiny hole and exited and another entered on the left, five inches away from the knee and is lodged there they cannot get it out,” she added.
Like others, she denied that the lawmen were provoked into firing by the protestors. “We were not throwing missiles at them. And, if I was throwing missiles how was I shot at the back?” the irate woman questioned.
Janice Burgan, who remains a patient of the LHC nursing a gunshot wound to her left shoulder, said that she was out protesting peacefully when she was shot. “The protest was going on reasonably well, till the police came out and it had a scuffle with a Rasta man and we tried to get things sorted out and we did and then they went away,” she said.
Subsequently, two vans loaded with approximately fifteen “black clothes” officers arrived at the scene and it was members of this unit that she blamed for the shooting. “They came with big guns and then they start throwing tear gas then they began firing live rounds. We just hear the guns start firing and everybody start running and screaming,” Burgan said. With other protesters, she began running towards the Linmine Secretariat and they came under fire.
Burgan maintained that no one fired or created unrest when the police arrived. She stated that earlier during the day, members of the riot squad were there with a loud speaker pleading with the protesters to go home but no one heeded their call, resulting in them leaving and returning armed.
“This bill we cannot pay that, we don’t have jobs. How much people like me and others are going to be on the street begging? We can’t go to the President to beg for a plate of rice, we can’t go to [Prime Minister] Sam Hinds and ask for nothing. We are here struggling fighting for our lives and they not helping,” she added amidst tears.
Hector Solomon, who was shot to the chest, was writhing in pain when this newspaper visited him, while Dexter Scotland was unable to speak. He said he was gun-butted to the face.
At the Georgetown Hospital, relatives of Reuben Bowen alleged that after he was shot, ranks attempted to assault him. “When he get shoot and fall down in the bush, the police go fuh beat he with a wood when he tell them that he get shoot,” said a relative.
Some of the injured called yesterday for national condemnation of the “unnecessary” shooting by the police.
