Prisoner disarms constable, shoots corporal dead

Brumell orders immediate investigation, cites negligence

The Guyana Police Force has been plunged into a state of shock and mourning as Detective Corporal 14998 Seburn Elias was shot dead last evening by a fleeing prisoner with whom he had a scuffle.

Just after 18.30 hrs, a prisoner from the Turkeyen Station, 23- year- old Delon Abrams, of South Ruimveldt, Georgetown, who was at the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital disarmed a police constable after giving him a sound trashing.
The constable, this newspaper was informed, put up a fight but was overpowered by the prisoner who took the weapon and attempted to fire it, but was unsuccessful. The prisoner then bolted out of the hospital compound and into a nearby community with the disarmed rank in full pursuit.
The police at the outpost at the GPHC immediately radioed for backup as an alarm was raised and within seconds heavily armed policemen rushed to the Alberttown community and cornered the prisoner. A scuffle ensued and the detective corporal was shot in the process. He was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital in a critical condition and died while receiving medical attention.
One woman said that she was at the hospital and that she was there for most of the day with her sick father. The woman said that she observed several other prisoners arriving with different police officers guarding them but in the case of the prisoner from Turkeyen only the young constable accompanied him.
She related that the young policeman approached the nurses at the facility on several occasions to have his prisoner attended to so that he could be taken out of the facility. She said that on each occasion the nurses kept turning the young man away, advising him to “hold on”.
The prisoner then requested to go to the washroom. It is not clear if the prisoner was handcuffed, but when he was allowed to use the washroom he opted to go into the female washroom and when the police constable followed him to advise him that he was in the wrong washroom he slammed the door, hitting the rank in the process. He then pounced on the police officer and disarmed him. Also present at the Georgetown Public Hospital last evening was Commissioner of Police Leroy Brumell who was briefed about the situation by ‘A’ Division Commander George Vyphius upon his arrival.
Commissioner Brumell said that he has ordered an immediate investigation into the unfortunate incident. He said that his initial report on the matter is suggesting that there was some amount of negligence on the part of the police and he would be very interested in knowing if the prisoner was shackled at the time he disarmed the rank.

(By Leroy Smith )