UP to late yesterday the doctors at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GHPC) were battling to save the life of 39-year old Shawn Nelson also known as “Red Man”, while the police at the Brickdam Police Station were trying to figure out what led local cricketer Carlyle Barton to point a gun at the now hospitalised man and pull the trigger, especially since the two are known to be friends. Nelson’s condition was listed as critical up to press time last evening.

Nelson, who resides at Joseph Pollydore Street Lodge was reportedly walking along Orange Walk yesterday morning in the city when a man pulled up in a Toyota 212 motorcar PKK 2030 and pointed a gun at him and suddenly there was the loud explosive sound. The car is said to be registered to another member of the local cricket fraternity.
The shooter was later identified as Carlyle Barton who represents Guyana at cricket matches across the Caribbean among other places, while Nelson is said to be a janitor working at a restaurant in the city not far from where he was shot in the head.
According to reports from sources close to the investigation, the now critically injured man was walking along Orange Walk when the cricketer pulled up alongside him and related that he had something to show him and whipped out the gun, pointing it at the man. There are reports that the gun went off accidentally, but the police up to late yesterday were still trying to ascertain that theory.
The sources said that the trigger-happy cricketer and some other friends who were in the car had minutes earlier returned from a recreational facility on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway and were heading to drop off friends to their respective homes when they encountered the man who is known to the shooter.
Unconfirmed reports suggested that two shots went off yesterday morning one of which entered one side of the janitor’s head and exited the other. It is also not clear if the bullet would have grazed any of the brain tissues.
Following the shooting, the car in which the cricketer and his friends were travelling was discovered in North Ruimveldt where it was wrapped around a utility pole. Investigators are claiming that after the incident the occupants of the car decided to flee the scene and in their haste to distance themselves from what occurred on Orange Walk slammed into the utility pole causing them to abandon the vehicle.
However immediately after the shooting the number plate of the vehicle was recorded by persons in the area who passed same on to the police, thus enabling investigators to nab the shooter. The incident occurred around 06.30 hrs yesterday.
Yesterday at the GPHC the injured man’s relatives were in total shock as they awaited word on his condition. His father Allan Nelson, who is popular in his hometown as a block maker could not deal with the news of his eldest son’s hospitalisation with a gunshot wound to the head. The man fainted yesterday after entering the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Georgetown Hospital where doctors were operating on his son.
His father is not hopeful of him being able to do anything for himself, should he manage to survive the tragedy.