A West Coast Berbice rice farmer succumbed on Monday evening after three men stormed his yard and one shot him in the heart.
The rice farmer’s relatives are calling on the police to conduct a thorough investigation since nothing was stolen during the attack.
Dead is Godfrey Adolphus Pluck Reynolds, 59, an APNU+AFC Councillor for Woodlands/ Bel Air Neighbourhood Democratic Council, who is also a shop owner of Number 8 Village, West Coast Berbice.
According to a post-mortem examination carried out yesterday, Reynolds died as a result of shock and haemorrhage due to a single gunshot wound to the heart. Stabroek News was told that the deceased also sustained a laceration to his head.
A close female relative of Reynolds was taken into custody on Monday evening for questioning.
Stabroek News was told that three armed men invaded Reynolds’ home and dealt him a lash in his head after which one shot him and they escaped. Nothing was stolen from the premises or from Reynolds since he was found with $686, 540, in his pocket, which he returned home with that afternoon.
According to a relative, Reynolds, a father of five, recently purchased a brand new tractor and left home on Monday to procure some items for it. His son, Denson Reynolds, relayed to Stabroek News yesterday that his mother told him they were in the bottom house around 10 pm when they saw three men in the backyard.
The man said he had just left his parents’ house around 9.30 pm after his father returned home.
“Me mother get up and he (deceased) decide to ask the men what y’all doing there, the men them kick down the door that is the one before you come in the bottom house and she say when them kick down the door she get up and run inside and run upstairs and lock the inside door and then she hear upstairs the men them tell me father lie down and after then she na hear nothing except a lash or a gunshot”.
According to relatives, the rice farmer after noticing the men instructed his wife to go upstairs and hide while he questioned why they were in his yard. Denson said it appears that his father was trying to brace the kitchen door in order to block the perpetrators from entering because the lock was discovered broken after the incident, “Mean by is three a them, them try to brace the door down because the lock spoil and right there he fall and lef where they shoot him”.
He noted that his father resided with his mother and a granddaughter, who also hid upstairs during the incident, “She say she heard papa say two word and that was it”.
Denson said when he was informed of the incident and he returned he saw his dead father lying on the floor just outside of the kitchen door holding on to his side. He noted, that he saw that his father had sustained a gunshot injury in the region of his heart and that there was a pool of blood around the body.
The junior Reynolds also said that his father was involved in a land issue after winning a section of lease land at MMA. He explained that after his father won the land he planted the land for the first crop and only recently harvested. “This first crop he win the land from a man and he plant it”.
Denson confirmed that there were persons planting on the land for several years before it was handed over to his father. “Is he parents them land and he win it”, the man noted.
