The five-member team from the CARICOM Regional Security System (RSS) which arrived here more than a week ago to assist local police with the investigation into the murders of teenaged cousins Isiah and Joel Henry as well as Haresh Singh de-parted Guyana on Tuesday.
Stabroek News was reliably informed that although the team has departed, the investigation into the murders remains active.
Information reaching this newspaper revealed that investigations are still awaiting the results from DNA samples which were sent to St. Lucia for testing.
During an interview with reporters Denis Chabrol and Nazima Raghubir last week, Presi-dent Irfaan Ali had disclosed that the samples were sent overseas for forensic analysis.
The team arrived here last Monday to assist the Guyana Police Force (GPF) with their investigation into the murders which occurred almost a month ago.
Isaiah, 16, a student at the Woodley Park Secon-dary School and Joel, 18, who worked at the Blair-mont Estate, went missing on Saturday, September 5th, after they left home for the Cotton Tree backlands to pick coconuts.
After they did not return home, relatives lodged missing persons’ reports with the police and subsequently launched a search. It was while searching that the bodies of the teens were discovered.
Autopsies performed on the bodies of the teenagers showed that they both died from haemorrhage and shock due to multiple wounds.
Days after this, another teenager, Haresh Singh, was also murdered in what is believed to be a reprisal killing.
About three weeks ago, the police had said that investigations revealed that the Henrys were not killed at the location where their bodies were found.
The police had said that the bodies of the cousins were found about 600 feet from each other in clumps of bushes near to a coconut farm on the WCB. “…Preliminary findings showed that the bodies of the Henry boys were discovered at a secondary crime scene,” the police in a statement had said.
This means that the heinous murders were not committed where the bodies were found. “Person(s) moved the bodies after the murder and placed them at the locations where they were subsequently discovered,” the police added.
Forensic evidence was found at the secondary crime scene and has since been collected, preserved and submitted to the Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL) for DNA analysis.
The police had also said that DNA samples were also collected from the suspects who were in custody and sent for a comparative analysis to be conducted against the forensic evidence collected from the secondary crime scene.
Director of the GFSL Delon France had previously told Stabroek News that the standard turnaround time for samples to be processed upon receipt is 30 days. However, France had said he has related to the police that the results from the Henrys’ case should be available in three weeks.
France had subsequently told Stabroek News that a decision was taken to send the samples overseas due to the urgency to have the results as soon as possible.
According to France, the GFSL is currently operating and has the capability of conducting the tests but not in the time span in which the results are needed in this case.
The RSS team comprised officials from countries within the Regional Investigative Management Systems (RIMS).
A second high-level forensic team from Argentina is also expected to visit here soon to assist with the investigation into the murders.
It is unclear when that team is scheduled to arrive here.
