-GDF soldier placed under close arrest
THE Guyana Defence Force (GDF) said it is investigating a fatal shooting at Eteringbang on Saturday last, at approximately 09:00 hrs, which resulted in the death of a Colombian national, Mr. Arturo Castilla Balcazar.

The GDF, in a statement yesterday, said preliminary investigations have so far revealed that a soldier at the location may have been responsible for the shooting. It said the soldier has since been placed under close arrest and was slated to have been brought to Georgetown later yesterday and handed over to the Guyana Police Force for further investigation.

In a subsequent statement later yesterday, this time from the GPF, it was stated that the person killed is a ‘Venezuelan’, as opposed to ‘Colombian’ as stated in the earlier statement by the GDF.

The GPF release said that a team of investigators has been despatched to the Eteringbang area to investigate the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of the 52-year-old foreign businessman

The Police said the foreign national died while he was travelling in a boat along the Wenamu River in the vicinity of Arau, Eteringbang – a gold-bearing district in western Guyana near the border with Venezuela.