Returning home from Barbados to spend Christmas with his family for the first time in five years, a 22-year-old Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo (EBE) man was stabbed to death on New Year’s Day during an altercation with a group of men at a rum shop at Greenwich Park, EBE.
Dewaun Anthony Baksh sustained a wound to his neck and a gaping injury to his left shoulder and was pronounced dead-on-arrival at the Leonora Cottage Hospital to where he was rushed after the 9.30pm incident. It appeared that the wounds were inflicted by a broken bottle.
According to the police, Baksh was involved in an altercation with a group of men at Greenwich Park during which he was stabbed about his body.
The suspect is still on the run but police have arrested the driver of a car that reportedly aided the man in his escape.
This was the first Christmas Baksh spent with his family in five years. He returned home from Barbados a few months ago where he did maintenance work and was expected to leave after the holidays. Stabroek News was told that Baksh left home at around 5.40pm on Friday with his twin brother, Dewane and a younger brother, Rafeek, 20, and two friends in a minibus to continue their New Year celebration.
Rafeek told Stabroek News that they headed to the Bushy Park beach where they spent a little time before going to Meten-Meer-Zorg to the home of another friend who had invited them. Subsequently, he said, Dewane returned home and they proceeded to a rum shop, popularly known as the ‘Pink Shop.’
According to Rafeek, when they got to the shop, he recognised a “fellow who had a lil vibes with my sister two years ago. I asked him if he could remember me and he said no.”
He said Baksh came up at the same time and asked him if everything was ok and another man who was with the other group shouted, “Wah happen, like you want problems.”
According to Rafeek, he turned and walked away, not realizing his brother was not with him. He then felt someone “lashing me in my head with a bottle and another man cuffing me and I fell.”
His friends came and rescued him but he did not know his brother was badly hurt and lying on the road. “Leh we pick he up and put he in the bus,” his friends told him and it was then he saw his brother bleeding from the wounds. Rafeek recalled that Baksh was “still breathing” on the way to the hospital but said when the doctor examined him “he told us ‘sorry’…”
Baksh’s mother Oriean Dookan told this newspaper that around 9.45pm one of the friends called and told her Baksh was hurt in an altercation and she must go to the hospital.
“He didn’t tell me that my son already dead, he just told me that he don’t think he would make it. When I reached to the hospital then I know my son dead,” the distraught woman said.
Meanwhile, the proprietress of the shop told Stabroek News that they were having a get-together at the time of the altercation and she cannot say what happened. She added that a man with a “red jersey came in and buy some beers” and then joined a group of men on the roadside.
Shortly after, she said, she heard the group pelting bottles and she closed the shop door. The woman said she did not hear them arguing because there was loud “music playing all around.” The man in the red jersey, Stabroek News was later told, is the suspect in the attack.
Police investigations are continuing.
