THE young suspect in last Saturday’s stabbing death in the Tiger Bay community remains in police custody, while an autopsy is scheduled to be performed today on the deceased, only known so far as “Rasta Man’.The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Christopher Stanley of Rosemary Lane, also in Tiger Bay, was moments after the grim discovery turned over to the Brickdam Police by his mother, Sonia Stanley.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, the tearful and deeply distraught mother of two, recalled that she was at her workplace on Middle Street on Saturday afternoon when, shortly after 16:00 hrs, she received a phone call saying, “Leisha, come quickly; Christopher just bore a man.”

The woman said she hastened home, where she found her son, who appeared to be in a daze. She said she gripped him by the arm and walked him down to the Police Outpost at the junction of Church and Water Streets. She said she was amazed to find that at no time did he attempt to resist her, or even ask her where she was taking him. “That was what broke my heart, because I realised then that my son was not acting in his normal senses,” the distraught mother said.
She recalled that after the alarm was raised about the stabbing, persons who intervened beat her son brutally; kicking him, stomping him, and inflicting wounds on his person.
She said she joined the police vehicle that was taking him to the hospital, since she had no money to pay to get there on her own. At the hospital, she recalled, she as well as the doctor and the police asked him what had happened, but he did not respond. “He just froze and said nothing,” she said.
When the doctor attempted to give him an injection, that’s when he resumed responding to stimuli, and they literally had to hold him down. She recalled that he also blacked out while at the Brickdam Police Station.
Stanley said the first time she heard her son speak following the tragedy was yesterday morning when she went to the police station to take him a meal.
“He asked me, ‘Mommy, what happen? Is when ah going home?” She said she had to muster up the strength and courage to tell him, “You can’t go home, because the boy dead.” But he still appeared not to have a clue what she was talking about, and seemed oblivious of everything around him.
Commenting on his life, she related that her son, the second of two, attended St. John’s College and after leaving school worked with BK International and a few other places, doing manual labour but eventually lost the jobs because he appeared not to get along with workmates.
She said that subsequently, her son became withdrawn and would always be by himself, very often, even talking to himself. Very often he could be heard lamenting the fact that he has needs and no job. She figured he might have gone into depression.
And reflecting on the killing of ‘Rasta Man’, the mother said her heart went out to the victim, as he was never a man to give anybody problems, and in fact her son looked up to him with respect, since he was always kind and helpful to the young people of the neighbourhood. “I can’t understand what would make him lay a finger on that man. ‘Rasta Man’ alright with everybody.”
Asked about reports that the lad had been drinking water from the roadside drain, and applying faeces to his body on Friday, Stanley said that on that day he had visited her at her workplace and asked for some water to drink, but before she could get to the keys to open up and get the water, he started drinking from the drain with his hands.
She admitted that on that occasion, she became scared and put it to him that she should take him to seek professional help, but he stoutly refused.
Now, she regrets terribly that she did not take immediate action after her son started behaving strangely on Friday. But to compound her problems, the grieving mother said, “People telling me I have to take a lawyer, but right now I do not know if I even have a job after this week because I worked with Tony Reid Realty as a security and he died a few days ago. Well, tell me if this ain’t ‘old house pon old house,” she lamented.

By Shirley Thomas