Tashana Barnes, the young woman who was hit when shots were fired during a brawl at the Platinum Night Club at Bartica last Friday, is worried that there is a “cover up” to protect the person who shot her and she is calling on authorities to thoroughly investigate and bring the shooter to justice.
“The police [have] my sister running around the place—‘Come back. Go back. We send the file [to the] DPP. We waiting this and that’—and I believe nothing will come out of this matter. Somebody will take pay off and I will be left here not sure if I will walk again,” said Barnes, 18.
The young woman, who lives at Farm, East Bank Essequibo, said that she was visiting relatives at Bartica and she and a friend visited the nightclub where a brawl ensued between patrons.
In a statement on the shooting last Saturday, police identified the shooter as Tyrone Lewis, who is a licensed firearm holder. According to police, at about 10:45pm on Friday, he was at a night spot at Bartica when he accidentally discharged a round which struck Barnes in the foot.
He was then confronted by a male patron about the incident, during which time he was reported to have made efforts to pull out the firearm a second time. It was at his point that he accidentally shot himself in his buttocks, police added.
But Barnes is disputing the account of the shooting given by police, saying that she and her friend were sitting when they heard what sounded like gunshots but dismissed it as they did not believe persons with arms were allowed in the club.
She said shortly after she saw Lewis fighting with another man and then saw another male, who was later identified as Lewis’ bodyguard, with a gun.
She said with this she began screaming and fled. “They, this Tyrone Lewis and another boy, had a big scramble and we turn to run because people were already running because like they know the other sounds before was bullets …then I look I see another man with a gun in he hand and I tell me friend ‘Gun! Gun! Run!’ and I tek off,” she said.
Barnes recalled that after making about three steps, she felt a warmth in her leg and realised she was hit. She kept running only to collapse a short distance away. She was later taken to the Bartica Hospital by a taxi driver. Barnes added that shortly after she arrived at the hospital, Lewis showed up with a gunshot wound to his buttocks.
She said that after police’s first visit to take a statement from her that evening, it seems that the case went cold. Her sister Marcia Skeete, who is nursing her, echoed her views.
“Nothing isn’t going to happen because we were told that the bodyguard take the blame. And the police said that they are not even sure that the bullet that hit her was a bullet fired from Tyrone gun because they got more than one type of shells at the scene,” she said.
“They hold the bodyguard for 72 hours then release he and didn’t even tell us until we ask. Then they say that the file at DPP and they waiting fuh know what to do because evidence don’t look enough to point to he,” she added.
Skeete says she does not want the case to fall to the wayside and she urged authorities to give her “some kind of justice.”
“I am calling on whoever to not let this just go down like this because what will happen to my sister? she queried.
