Taxi driver Paul Reman, the first person shot in Tuesday’s deadly rampage by miner Deryck Kanhai that left five persons dead, said that the gunman would frequently fire shots off in the area.
“This man had big connections. A time he and he small brother went on the verandah and he ask he mother, ‘Yuh wan see I shoot me self?’ And he shoot he self in he mouth. That was in 2010… Some nights we would be working and he would come out jus suh and holler, ‘Is where they deh? They come to rob me!’ And he would start shooting jus suh,” Reman said.
Kanhai’s brother Aubrey has told Stabroek News that his brother did not have a firearm licence when he shot himself in 2010 but he somehow managed to acquire one in 2011. The man said that he was often told by relatives and residents that the man would randomly discharge a shot in front of his house but he had never witnessed these dangerous exhibitions himself. With indications from senior police that Kanhai had never been charged as a result of these displays, including the 2010 shooting, questions have been raised as to how the man was able to gain two gun licences. A .32 pistol, a shotgun and a .22 pistol were recovered at the scene after Kanhai’s deadly rampage, which lasted over three hours, but he was not licensed to carry a .22 pistol.
Reman, who works with Crown’s Taxi Service, a taxi service operated from the bottom flat of Kanhai’s 315 Middle Street home, is currently recovering at the Georgetown Public Hospital. He sustained two bullet wounds to the abdomen.
Reman said that he is experiencing some pain in his abdomen but luckily for him doctors said that he has no internal bleeding.
Speaking with Stabroek News yesterday, Reman said that he was talking with some of his friends when Kanhai started shooting. “We was sitting down on the bench, me and another one of my big man friend, and all wah I hear is the door open and then I see this man rush in with a gun,” he recalled.
“When the man run out and point the gun at me, I said, ‘Oh s#!t this man trip’ and then he start cuss up and tell me to come out of his yard and when he shoot me I get up ’cause I say he gon kill me and I shout to me friend to run and then I hear ‘blam blam.’ Is the dispatcher he turn pon… I ask a man to drop me to the hospital and when I come here I hear a set of people dead,” Reman added.
Those who died in the deadly shooting were two police officers, Lance Corporal 20293 Michael Forde, and Constable 18053 Sherwin Pantlitz, dispatcher Vanessa Williams, 71-year-old Hugh Rowland, a resident of the area, and Kanhai himself.
