Relatives of slain miner Gavin McNeil say there is nothing to suggest that robbery was not the motive of the fatal attack on him on Wednesday night, during which both his wife and mother-in-law were wounded.
Up to press time last even-ing, police were still looking for the gunmen who escaped after shooting McNeil, 38, four times at his McDoom, East Bank Demerara yard.
The attack, dubbed an “armed robbery” by police yesterday, is the latest in a string since the beginning of the year.
According to police, the attack occurred at about 7:55pm, when McNeil and his two daughters, 12 and 14 years, and his mother-in-law, June Elwin, 49, just returned home.
As McNeil was parking his vehicle, the others proceeded to the house, where they were confronted by the robbers. Elwin said there were five of them.
Police said the men, two of them were armed with guns while the others had knives and cutlasses, forced their captives to call out to McNeil’s wife, Melissa McNeil, 32, who opened the door for them. The armed men then took away an undisclosed sum of cash, a quantity of jewellery and a cell phone and then escaped.
It was as they were making their way out of the compound that they shot McNeil to his neck and shoulder, according to police. He was later pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Although the robbers did not apparently seek to relieve him of his jewellery, police sources yesterday insisted that robbery was the motive behind the man’s death. One source said that killing McNeil was not in the initial plan and it could be that he attempted to resist his attackers, resulting in them shooting him.
During the robbery, Elwin was assaulted about her body with a cutlass and Melissa suffered a cut to her face.
“Yes it was a robbery,” Elwin stressed at the man’s home yesterday, where relatives and friends gathered to express shock at the attack and to offer words of comfort to the family.
Based on what Stabroek News was told, the perpetrators entered the yard from the back and left the same way. The men scaled a back fence and then cut a huge hole in a gate at the side of the house. The layout of the yard could have easily been used by the robbers to conceal themselves prior to the attack.
The visibly-traumatised Elwin appeared to be in pain as the result of the lacerations to her shoulder and left arm, which she sustained while being beaten with a cutlass.
Recounting the moments leading up to the shooting, she said the two girls were walking ahead of her to the house when she heard the older one screaming.
Initially, Elwin thought that the child was being attacked by marabuntas, which she had noticed flying around. But the next thing she saw was both girls being held at knife-point. She said that the men threatened to kill the girls if she did not open the door leading into the house.
Elwin said she did as she was asked and the men entered the house. “They start beating me [with the cutlass] and asking me for the gold and the money,” she said, while recalling that she pleaded with her daughter to hand over valuables.
In the end, between $800,000 and $1M in cash and jewellery were handed over.
She said that three of the men were in the house, while two more were outside in the yard with McNeil. According to the woman, the shooting occurred while they were being held at gunpoint in the house.
The woman believes that her son-in-law was trying to fight off the bandits and was at the time unaware that they were in possession of a gun. The police, she said, came about five minutes after the 15-minute long ordeal had ended.
From all indications, Elwin said, the men were watching their movements. She said that her son-in-law had only returned home on Saturday from Sipa-runi, in Region Eight, where he worked.
The family has only been residing at the McDoom address for about eight months. Prior to that, they were living on the Venezuela side of the Guyana/Venezuela border, where McNeil also worked as a miner.
“He was a very good person. He was the best person I had ever met… I am not saying that because he was my son-in-law. He was a good person,” Elwin said of McNeil, who was originally from Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara.
