PANDEMONIUM broke out yesterday at the Guyana Fisheries Limited wharf at Houston, on the lower East Bank at the sight of the remains of a popular fisherman reportedly killed at sea.The dead fisherman, who has been positively identified as 27-year-old Ronald Emanuel Reid, of Costello Housing Scheme, Georgetown, was brought ashore, under police escort, by the very vessel on which he worked and was killed while fishing off Lichfield, West Coast Berbice.

So, too, were his assailants, 39-year-old Gregory Nohar of Paradise, Essequibo Coast, and his brother, Roy, who was also on the vessel when the incident occurred. It is still not clear what may have led to the killing.

ANGER AND GRIEF
The mere sight of Reid’s body wrapped in tarpaulin caused many of the scores gathered on the wharf, among them fellow fishermen and Reid’s own relatives, to just vent in anger or cry out in grief.
Many thought Reid did not deserve to die the way he did, as he was not a trouble-maker; many could not wait to get their hands on the men who killed him, which made getting them off the vessel extremely difficult.
“All ah we can just jump pon de boat and kill dem right now,” one irate friend of Reid’s declared in the presence of several policemen as the crowd grew uncontrollable.
Another, called ‘Puttagee’, whipped out a knife from his waist and jumped onto the fishing vessel in which the brothers were being held under police guard. Thankfully, a policeman was able to subdue him and wrest the knife from him.
In the end, the police had to resort to putting the brothers on a speedboat and taking them to a different location from whence they were shuttled to the Ruimveldt Police Station.

BACKGROUND
According to one of the crew members of the vessel, it was Roy Nohar who started the altercation with Reid, and his brother, Gregory, who plunged the knife into him.
Relating what transpired, the captain of the fishing vessel, Ron Kumar, said it was the first time Reid had ever gone to sea with him.
He said, too, that even before Gregory stabbed Reid, he’d called his family and told them to meet him at the wharf, as the boat was coming in. To him, it was a clear indication that he’d made up his mind to to kill Reid.
“Is like he already plan to do what he wanted,” Kumar said, adding:
“Roy Nohar been ah hold back Reid from fighting, and like he brother decide fuh stab he then… The whole trip dem man picking at each other.”

He quoted Reid, who has a young wife and a baby on the way, as saying to Roy: “Father, me ain’t want no story wid you; I done wid you. Y’all lef me alone, bhai; I done. All two a’we stupid; so leh we done…” But Nohar wouldn’t let up; he just kept prolonging the issue, Kumar said.
Gregory Nohar, who is being accused of murder, said: “The whole thing start when dem start smoking dem dope and dem start get flashes; yuh know, when yuh smoking, is anything yuh does flash pun. That is what start this whole thing; now, look how it end.”
According to Reid’s father, Brian, he received a call Tuesday evening from the boat saying that his son was stabbed and had bled to death.
“I say, ‘Man, is joke you all mekkin?’ Then the captain take the phone and said, ‘Brother, this is ‘wine-up’ telling yuh ‘Manni’ dead; dem them man jook he and he lie down in a corner and dead,’” Reid’s dad recalled.
Noting that his son had been going to sea for the past seven years, Brian Reid said, “My son don’t deh in problem; he big and strong and he don’t mess around people. You can ask anybody about dis man; he don’t deh in problem at all. Anybody can tell dis man anything, and he don’t really get vex; like I never hear my son cuss nobody.”
Explaining what he learnt of what transpired, Brian Reid said:

“I hear that he and de man that stabb him had a talkin’ and de talkin’ did done; and then when they went to pick up the seine and pull in the bow line, he stab he wid a knife.”

By Rabindra Rooplall