FOUR days before his birthday, 15-year-old Ricardo Singh was killed on Sunday night at a wedding house on the Soesdyke East Bank Demerara (EBD) Public Road.

Singh of Lot 63, Block 1 Diamond, Housing Scheme, EBD had left his home around midday on Sunday. Two persons are currently in police custody assisting with investigations.
According to an eyewitness, he was at a nearby shop making a purchase when he noticed several persons fighting at the wedding house. He then saw a 27-year-old welder and a 32-year-old taxi driver, both of Soesdyke,being attacked by several unknown men who were armed with bottles and knives.

The eyewitness said a police patrol arrived after the scuffle and picked up two persons and placed them in the pick-up tray. Upon closer inspection, he saw a man lying on the roadway with stab wounds to his abdomen and later learnt that the person died when he was taken to Diamond Public Hospital.

One resident in the area said that there are cameras attached to the building where the wedding was held and it would be able to give police a clearer picture of what occurred on the night. “During the fight many of them held onto the boy, dragged and stabbed him up after about 11:30 that night, they burst his throat and slashed his gut, and it was six of them that attacked him, when the police came they placed him in the vehicle tray until one in the morning and he bled to death,” the Soesdyke resident said.

In an interview with this publication, Elaine Singh said that her son who attends Diamond Secondary School left home at midday on Sunday and was out with a friend who lives in the same street. The mother of four explained that when she noticed a certain time in the night had passed and her son had not returned home she immediately began calling his cell phone.

Noting that she did not sleep all night, Mrs. Singh said that his phone kept ringing out all night and she later learned that his friend returned home without relating that her son was severely injured or had been killed. “One of his friends come home here minutes to eight and told me he heard Ricardo get jook up and he don’t know if he dead, and that was it,” she said in tears.

She continued: “Then the boy he went with to the wedding visited and said how they were going to get rob of his chain and some money and some fight start and he ran and left him behind and he didn’t know what happened.”
Further, the mother said that her husband visited the Timehri Police Station and she advised him to let the police visit their son’s friend for him to give a report since he was at the scene of the altercation that led to her son’s demise.

“His story was inconsistent, and I had to ask him how can he pass me and head home knowing that my son is dead without telling me anything,” Elaine Singh said. She explained that her son was not dressed for a wedding since he was wearing a pair of three quarter pants and tee-shirt. “He didn’t dress for a wedding, he even had on a pair of slippers and he didn’t tell me he was going there,” she said with tears. “He and his friends who are older than him usually hang out together, but I don’t know what to say about this and how this really happened.”

The body of Ricardo Singh is at the Lyken’s Funeral Home awaiting a post- mortem examination.