By Desilon Daniels
A North East La Penitence man was last night killed in a robbery, the very day he returned to Guyana Water Inc. (GWI) after a week of sick leave.
Dead is Marvin Cumbermack, 29, of 190 North East La Penitence who was shot several times as he made his way home on motorbike from the GWI Sophia Water Treatment Plant.
According to reports, at around 9 pm Cumbermack left work and was making his way to his girlfriend’s Sophia home when he was intercepted by a man on a bicycle. The man, it is said, demanded that Cumbermack surrender his motorcycle CF1816. However, Cumbermack put up a fight and was subsequently shot around five times.
“I was home when I heard the shots,” one resident relayed. “A bunch of people came out to help; one man even come out with a pitchfork.”
According to the woman, the bandit had left the scene so calmly that
some persons were not even aware that he was the perpetrator of the shooting.
At the scene in Sophia last night, scores gathered as Cumbermack’s bloodied body lay on the roadside. The man’s helmet was still on.
An ambulance from the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) arrived around 9:30 pm to remove the body from the scene. However, after putting the man’s body into the vehicle’s carriage, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) soon removed the body and placed it back on the road.
According to the EMTs, they had been ordered by the police to leave the body on the site because the area was now considered a crime scene.
However, no police turned out to cordon off the area and the body was eventually removed almost an hour later by attendants of the Lyken’s Funeral Parlour.
Claire Carrington, Cumbermack’s mother, told Stabroek News last night that she had been at work when she was received a call from her son’s co-worker. “I just got a call that my son got shot and I came to Sophia and just see him lying there on the road,” the woman said.
Several persons expressed their disgust at the decision to leave the body on the road with one relative of the dead man hurling expletives at the EMTs.
The EMTs were also apparently upset with the police and loudly questioned why no officers had come forward to deal with the scene.
“You got to pronounce the man dead! You can’t just leave him there,” one woman called out, before adding, “This is a real cowboy place.”
“It’s like somebody knock down a dog and push it down to the roadside,” another man lamented. Onlookers also bemoaned the spate of crime in Sophia and expressed outrage at the shooting. “I pray to God they ketch who do this. You can’t even walk in Sophia; this place get terrible,” one resident said.
“Is for a bike they kill him,” one relative added. “He was supposed to come home tonight,” she said.
According to fellow workers at GWI, Cumbermack, a former prison officer, had been an employee of the company for two years and had been on a week’s sick leave. He had only returned to work yesterday.
