A 33-year-old man was Saturday night attacked by three teenage boys and fatally stabbed by one of them while on Commerce Street, Georgetown. Dead is John Williams, a machine operator from Lot 102 Martyr’s Ville, Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara.
According to police reports, the incident occurred around 21:15 hrs. Williams was walking north on Water Street with a green haversack on his back when he turned onto Commerce Street and was ambushed by the suspects from behind, the police said.
The suspects, identified as Daniel Badley, 19; a 14-year-old, and a 15-year-old, were allegedly attempting to steal Williams’s haversack, the release said. When he resisted, one of the suspects stabbed him in the left upper chest with a knife, causing him to collapse on the roadway, it added.
Following the attack, the suspects fled the scene in an eastern direction, and then south, but the two youngest were later captured by the police and are in custody.
Emergency Medical Technicians were called and Williams was pronounced dead by a doctor. The crime scene unit discovered what appeared to be bloodstains on the victim’s jersey and the ground, the police said.
According to the man’s sister-in-law, Maria, John started working as an excavator operator about two weeks ago at Red Road, Providence. She said he had called his wife Manesha Ali on Saturday.
“He left the morning to go to work, around 6:30. And she said the last time she spoke to him was 7:30 that night when he was coming back. He told her that he’s at the bus park waiting for bus. That’s at the 44 bus park… And that was the last time she spoke to him. After that, she said she keep calling and the phone keep ringing out. And then the police contacted her, I’m not sure what time, and then her father went to Brickdam Station and then they took him to identify the body,” the sister-in-law related.
Williams was the father of four children; the eldest being 11 and the youngest, an eight-month-old baby girl. His sister-in-law, who spoke on behalf of his devastated widow, told this newspaper: “She needs assistance because her husband was the sole breadwinner for the whole house. She has a pensioner father. He normally takes care of everybody, so now that he’s gone, they have no one to take care of them. She has all the children and her father to look after. There’s no way that she could go to work because the eight-month baby is breastfeeding on her currently.”
The young woman added that the time when Williams would arrive from work at his Mon Repos home varied, depending on the availability of East Coast transportation.
The police report said that at the time of the attack, Williams was carrying the green haversack and wearing a white jersey, a white vest, black jeans, and brown steel-tipped boots.
His body was transported to Memorial Gardens mortuary as authorities await a post-mortem examination to determine the exact cause of death.
