Acting top cop David Ramnarine on Friday assured that the Monica Reece murder investigation is still very much alive and made it clear that he doesn’t know which police officer covered up the crime.
Ramnarine was at the time responding to questions during a press conference.
“It is an investigation that has to be ongoing. It is an active investigation”, he said. Last month he had revealed that a review of the two-decade-old case has revealed that “an unprofessional course of action” was taken.
When asked if anyone has been questioned recently in connection with the probe, he maintained that it is an ongoing investigation.
Asked whether the late police commissioner Laurie Lewis was implicated in the covering up of the crime, he said “I don’t know…” Asked if anyone else was implicated he responded in the negative and when pressed further asked the reporter who asked the question if he knew. “I wasn’t at the helm of the force at the time. I wasn’t even a deputy commissioner…assistant commissioner. I was …a cadet officer at that point in time. How would I know?”.
Told that he would know from the files, he responded “I don’t see files in front of me every day”.
The death of the then 19-year-old Reece, a security guard, has been seen in some quarters as one of the major events in the rise of crime in the 1990s.
Reece’s body was dumped from a speeding pickup vehicle in the vicinity of the Geddes Grant building (now Courts) on Main Street, Georgetown on April 9, 1993.
The police had picked up a suspect and questioned him and also detained a vehicle he sometimes drove, but shortly after, the lack of evidence caused him to be released and the vehicle was returned.
An announcement of the reopening of the case was first made by Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum, who had said that the decision followed calls made by members of the public, and particularly by relatives.
