A construction worker was shot dead at Belle Vue, West Bank Demerara on Wednesday evening, minutes after a heated argument with his neighbour and his family is alleging that he was killed by a group of neighbourhood police.
Godfrey Jhaggroo, 20, of 31 Belle Vue, West Bank Demerara, was headed to the Wales Police Station to file a report against his neighbour, who had hit him in the stomach with a piece of wood. Eyewitnesses said that he was walking along the unlit public road when they suddenly heard gunshots and saw Jhaggroo’s body being dumped into a vehicle.
Three men have been taken into custody, police said yesterday.
Police said Jhaggroo was involved in an argument with his mother, during which his neighbour,
who operates an off licence liquor store, intervened and assaulted him with a piece of wood.
According to police, Jhaggroo was on his way to the Wales Police Station to make a report when he was confronted by three men, who had been at the off licence liquor store, and he was shot to his back with a shotgun. Jhaggroo was pronounced dead on arrival at the West Demerara Regional Hos-pital.
Jhaggroo’s mother, Babita, said that her son came home from work that evening and upon discovering their DVD player’s remote control was damaged he started to argue with his sisters. “That’s when the man over there and some people in the shop drinking start to throw words at him and he told them that they shouldn’t put their mouth in family matter,” she recalled, before adding that her neighbour then became enraged and rushed over to their house and her son in the stomach with a piece of wood.
“Is then my son pick up the wood and pelt it back and it hit his daughter and the man said he going to the police but I called the police at Wales and they said that I should bring my son…so I tell him to walk up without me…I had to put on my clothes…and he left…,” she said.
“When I reached the corner, some people standing at the road corner tell me ‘Guh quick Guh quick! Gun shots a fire and your son got shoot,’” the woman added as she broke down into tears.
She recalled seeing her neighbour’s car and another car parked on the roadside. “I see him Gewan [her neighbour] pitching a torchlight and picking up bullet shells…and the more they pitch the light is the more blood we see,” she said. “They brackle my son and shoot him!”
“Me see my son lay down on a thing and blood cover all over him…” she lamented.
One eyewitness, Sabina [only name given], said that she saw when some men picked up his body and threw it in a vehicle. “People said look that boy just get shoot and indeed we see they pick up his body and throw it in the vehicle and drive away. Then we see the big man from the shop picking up the shells and I tell he that he cleaning up the evidence,” she said, adding that when the police had questioned him about if he did it, she said that “‘he just down his head.’” “This is a poor woman and now look what happen to her family,” she added.
Jhaggroo’s sister, Sandy Jhaggroo, said that a group of community police was drinking in the shop when the owner of the shop hit her brother. “They always picking trouble with him…that night they were over there and throwing words at him,” she stated.
“They premeditated to kill him because they follow him on the road and wait in the dark fuh shoot him. When we go on the road, we ask the shop man if he see my brother and he said no,” she said. The owner of the gun, a member of the neighbourhood policing group, was taken into custody along with the shop owner, she added.
She also said that the owner of the gun claimed that the gun was taken away from him by another neighbourhood police’s son, who then shot her brother.
Godfrey is survived by his four sisters and four brothers and a four year-old daughter. A post- mortem examination will be performed today on his body.
