A 14-year-old West Bank Demerara school boy was yesterday afternoon shot and killed during an unexplained and indiscriminate discharge of gun-fire, presumably from a high-powered rifle, emanating from somewhere between Friendship and Craig Villages on the West Demerara River, residents say.
Dead is Ryan Persaud, of Vive-La-Force, West Bank Demerara, a Third Form student of Patentia Secondary School. He was the son of lumber contractor Heeralall Persaud and Deborah Persaud.
Ryan was just by roadside, just opposite the Persauds’ home, around 15:30 hrs. Ryan was standing at the roadside watching his elder cousin Feroze Hussein and a younger boy catch shrimps from a canal.
Feroze recalled that as Ryan was standing observing them fish, then he suddenly saw him grip his chest and he started to bleed and heard him exclaim that he was hit in his back. The lads raised an alarm and the family got the cooperation of a pastor from the nearby Victory Deliverance Church who transported the injured lad to the West Demerara Regional Hospital.

Meanwhile, his mother Deborah is calling on the police to leave no stone unturned in finding the perpetrators of this ghastly act and having them brought to justice.
Ryan leaves to mourn his parents, three brothers and grandparents, among others.