The Guyana Police Force yesterday interviewed a “person of interest” in the January shooting of School of the Nations Director Dr. Brian O’Toole.
O’Toole told Stabroek News yesterday that he was informed that the police had arrested an individual, whom he named, and were interviewing him. However, the Crime Chief, Deputy Police Commissioner Lyndon Alves, maintained that there had not yet been an arrest. “There is a young man, a person of interest, that is being interviewed,” he told this newspaper.
O’Toole, whose left hand was left paralysed as a result of the shooting, noted that the person currently being questioned was the child he had initially identified and in his opinion is a person who was involved in his shooting.
“Various bits of ‘proof’ have been provided that he was out of the country at the time. I have seen ‘proof’ from the immigration office that he travelled out of the country before the incident but it’s one thing to pull the trigger [and] another to be involved in organising,” he explained.
According to O’Toole, the child in question had been expelled from the school shortly before he was attacked. He declined to identify the offence which led to the expulsion but stressed that the action was only taken after very “thorough investigations” since the school administration is aware of the impact expulsion can have on both a child and their parents.
O’Toole was shot on January 27th, hours after he had called a meeting at the school to address threats that had surfaced online against the school’s student body.
The threats were made via Facebook and police and cybersecurity experts had been trying to locate the individual responsible.
Last month, O’Toole submitted new evidence—described as a “sickening” audio recording—to the police.
In detailing the audio, O’Toole indicated that “a person of interest” could be heard gloating about the shooting, saying ‘Isn’t it amazing that when you shot the man, he did the Fortnite dance?’ And then he said, ‘How wicked is that?’ And he laughed.
“Whether that’s evidence—I am not a lawyer in the court of law. It shows he knows what’s going on and its shows that the guy is sick… and I am not saying he is the shooter, I have never said that,” he said.
After the audio was handed over, Police Commissioner Leslie James told reporters at a press conference that the police were pursuing three individuals.
James said one of them—the individual now being questioned—left the country prior to the shooting. “…Based on the information given to us, we took certain steps. We have checked our internal records and based on our checks it [was] revealed that the individual was out of the jurisdiction based on a document that we perused,” James said.
The individual has reportedly also been deemed a person of interest in relation to the cyber threats made towards the student body of the school prior to the attack on O’Toole.
Following the shooting, James said local police made contact with their counterparts abroad.
“…We have been in contact with our counterparts and we have had back and forth communication pursuant to this matter. So, as I said, [there is] existing cooperation between the two countries,” he noted
O’Toole in turn said he was shown a document which indicated that the individual indeed departed the country on December 15th, 2018.
“They showed us proof of certain forms that were filled out to say that he left the country on date X, so now, as in any investigation, the request is in to corroborate that,” he said.
He, however, maintained that the person he saw on the night of the shooting clearly fits the description of this individual.
“As I said before, the house was clearly lit. I believe that I have a clear picture of who the person was. I gave that statement to the police that statement has never changed, my description of the person…in my mind, I have a picture exactly of what the guy looks like and that picture of what was in my mind has been shared with the police… I have shared an idea to the police that they are working on. They have gone through their protocol to say he wasn’t in the country at the time and I have said clearly to the police, if that’s proven then I am more than willing to say—well, obviously if its proven—I am more than happy to say well it can’t be him,” O’Toole added.
