Several months after he announced the reopening of a few cold cases, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum yesterday told media operatives that the investigations were open and the police have since re-interviewed some witnesses as promised.
Blanhum made this disclosure yesterday morning after being questioned specifically about the murders of political activist Courtney Crum-Ewing and Monica Reece. However, he refused to divulge any other details about the investigations, stating “that’s all I can say at this point in time”.
Crum-Ewing, a 40-year-old father of three, was gunned during March 2015 in Diamond New Housing Scheme, on the East Bank Demerara whilst urging persons to vote in the May 2015 general elections.
More than a year after, Regan Rodrigues called “Grey Boy” was charged with the murder but was freed after the magistrate ruled that there was no evidence which suggested to the court that Rodrigues was the one who pulled the trigger the night Crum-Ewing was murdered.
During last year July, Blanhum had announced that the Major Crimes Unit of the Guyana Police Force was reopening several cold cases, a decision which he had said followed by calls made by members of the public, and particularly by relatives.
Among these cases were the murders of Sheema Mangar and Trevor Rose, and a review of the file on the 23-year-old case of Reece.
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. Her body had been 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.
Blanhum had said among these cases, Mangar’s murder has been placed on the front-burner. In September of 2010, Mangar, an employee of a city bank, was said to have been waiting to catch a minibus to head home when her phone was snatched from her. The young woman pursued the thief, who jumped into a car and ran her down when she tried to stop him from fleeing.
The car dragged Mangar from the Bedford Methodist Church at Camp Street and North Road to the intersection of Camp and Church streets and she died while receiving medical attention at St Joseph Mercy Hospital the following day.
Rose was killed on the morning of January 26, 2014, after a lone gunman, in a heavily-tinted vehicle, opened fire on the car in which he was travelling at Eccles, East Bank Demerara, hitting him five times.
Also injured in the shooting were Rose’s driver, Troy Nieuenkirk, and Rose’s companion, Latoya Towler.
Rose and Towler were said to be heading to a house in Eccles when the shooting occurred.
