Reminiscent of ‘Baby Arthur’ massacre…
WILLIAM Lyte, 41, was arrested yesterday after it was reported to Police that he went berserk, chopped two persons to death and wounded two others.
The dead are Ann Chan-A-Koon, 38, of Lot 60 and Cedric Blackman, 75, of Lot 57, also on Russell Street, Charlestown, the latter at whose house he often stayed and had breakfast before the killings.
The surviving injured are Radesh Persaud, 41, of lot 38 Russell Street and Sean De Souza, of Lot 58 Howes Street, in Charlestown, as well.
Blackman’s wife, Philomena Lancaster, 68, told the Guyana Chronicle that she was at home with him about 07:30 h when Lyte visited them, as usual, enquiring what she had for breakfast.
She related:“He asked for bread and I told him there was none. I gave him money to buy and he returned and made his own tea and had his meal.”
The woman explained that her husband had already eaten his and was sitting on a sofa near a door while she was in the kitchen with her son-in-law, Compton George, when they heard a noise.
Lancaster said she and George hurried to see what was happening and saw Lyte at the door, which was ajar with a bloodied cutlass in his hand. Blackman was already dead from chop wounds in the head, neck and hand with his foot by the door, as though he tried to preventing Lyte getting through it.
She said Lyte ran when he saw them and George gave chase but when he turned on him, George fled inside the house.
Lancaster said Lyte then chased after Persaud who escaped him.
Persaud said he had returned home from work and was walking on the pavement when a man informed him that Lyte had just chopped a man dead but, by time he could react, Lyte was upon him with the cutlass.
Persaud said he sought refuge in Chan-A-Koon’s yard but was cornered by Lyte who chopped him on the head.
“I fought for my life because that man was going to kill me and I tried scaling a fence but I slipped and he was fighting with me and I held onto him until he ran off,” Persaud narrated, after he was discharged from Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH), having received sutures and treatment for bruises on his knees from his struggle with Lyte.
He said he was going to buy cigarettes when he was attacked.

Cries
Chan-A-Koon rushed out of her home after hearing cries for help, from her relative Persaud and was standing on Howes Street when Lyte inflicted a wound on her head before she could flee.
Lyte’s next victim, De Souza, stood on the roadway on hearing the commotion and also suffered wounds on his head and neck before he got away from his assailant.
Blood was on his concrete bridge as he was conveyed to the GPH where he was a patient up to press time.
Brothers Samuel and David Headley, of Lot 57 Howes Street, recalled seeing dreadlocked Lyte, who does odd jobs, with a cutlass running towards them after they had seen him chopping De Souza.
David said he went into his yard and came out with a cutlass to defend himself and Lyte just walked away.
The siblings said the Police arrived on scene in the nick of time because he had already chopped four persons, two of whom died on the spot and two suffered injuries.
Samuel declared: “We would have killed him if the Police did not apprehend him. He was playing mad but he calmly surrendered himself to the Police and handed over his cutlass.”
Lyte was quickly whisked away, by the Police, from the angry crowd shortly after 10:00 h.
The teens said they had also witnessed Lyte chopping Chan-A-Koon, whose head he severed with the final chop and the mother of two died within minutes.
At Chan-A-Koon’s residence, her relatives said she was upstairs cooking a meal when they heard screams of ‘Aunty Dass’ and, when they looked out, they saw Lyte chasing their relative, Persaud, with a cutlass.
Persaud got into their yard where he was wounded on the head and neck by Lyte.
Chan-A-Koon ran outside to see what was happening after handing her eight months old baby to her aunt.
She walked to Howes Street and when Lyte saw her, he abandoned chasing after Persaud and attacked her.
Eyewitnesses said she collapsed to the ground and, obviously in fear, she was dealt the fatal wound to the neck.
She had been staying with relatives for four months but has two daughters, baby Sul-Lin and 19-year-old Rabia.
Nandanie Calvan, 60, of Lot 57 Howes Street was another who said she ran for her life from the cutlass wielder and advised a teacher at the Blessed Children Day Care and Play Group nearby to lock the door from the random chopper.
She said the man had exposed his privates to her 16-year-old daughter last week.
Others in the neighbourhood said Lyte had been sharpening a cutlass for about three days and would interfere with women and young girls from Blackman’s home where he was staying.
Dozens of people who converged in the area where the tragedy occurred said Lyte was chopping anyone in his path as he jogged along Russell and Howes Streets.
Lancaster, who operates a shop, said Lyte is originally from Kildonan, Corentyne, Berbice and did masonry and carpentry work.
She does not think he is mentally challenged but appeared upset when he arrived at their home for breakfast yesterday morning.
She said, recently, he slept there in a hammock and seemed normal.
Police, in a press release, said they are investigating the incident that occurred about 09:40 h yesterday at Russell and Howes Streets, where a 42-year-old man, of Stevedore Squatting Area, in Georgetown, too, was armed with a cutlass, ran berserk and chopped four persons, killing two of them and leaving the other two patients at the GPH.
The man is in Police custody and the cutlass, suspected to have been used in the wounding, was recovered.
The killings yesterday morning were reminiscent of the December 10, 1994 massacre, when Hubert Headley alias ‘Baby Arthur’ butchered his mother and five others, including a child, at Buxton, East Coast Demerara.
He was shot and killed by the Police that same day.