WITHIN the space of weeks, grandchildren of two of Chronicle’s editors were attacked by young criminals.Linda Rutherford’s grand-daughter would need reconstructive surgery after being burnt in the face in school with a flare gun, but it is unlikely that all the physical scars would ever fade: The mental and emotional trauma is another matter; and these devastating experiences resonate down the by-lanes of the lives of victims forever.
Twice within weeks, Rico Edwards and his sister, Romena Peters, were robbed of their Blackberry cellphones by gun-toting bandits. On the first occasion, the thief, who had just exited a bus, even took the child’s school haversack. The second time — last Sunday, Rico’s 13th birthday — the thief was on a bicycle and robbed the children one block away from their home.
A while ago, Maria Benschop returned home from an evening out with her cast members. Two young men on a bike followed her as she drove through her gate, and assaulted her as she fought to prevent them wresting her keys away, because she knew her young son was asleep in the house. Her struggles proved futile, and the thieves carted off Maria’s money, a large, flat-screen television, her son’s Blackberry phone and other items.
They did not merely rob their victims of material things, but their sense of security also, even within the sanctity of their own home.
On the West Coast of Demerara, a young businessman — the only son of his parents and a father of babies — was ruthlessly gunned down by thieves. There are also cases where elderly women have been brutally killed in their homes for possessions they had amassed after a lifetime of toil, struggle and sacrifice; pensioners being robbed of their wherewithal in the twilight of their years; schoolchildren robbed by their peers, and wives brutally murdered by spouses, in most instances effectively leaving young children orphaned, and with lifelong scars and trauma.
These stories are replicated in various ways throughout the country, but with one common factor: Ruthless malefactors who would not work for a living, but envy the possessions of others and want quick riches, and think nothing of disposing of someone’s life in the process of wresting from them their coveted possessions.
The recent horrifying murder of a 17-year-old for his car, and the mowing down by a drunken teenager of three young lives have once again drawn a bloody underline of Guyana’s security dilemma, and the need to address it expeditiously and effectively, and this begins in the community.
There is serious need for members within communities to grab hold and halt the downward spiral of the behaviour of Guyana’s youths; otherwise, we are a doomed nation.