TWENTY-one years today, relatives and friends of the six people cut down in a 400-yard swathe of blood and gore by a raving cutlass-wielding lunatic are still in tears, still living in fear, not just because of losing a loved one, but because of the horrendous way in which they died.On the afternoon of Friday December 9, 1994, 33-year-old Hubert Headley, fondly called ‘Baby Arthur’, of 152 Middle Walk, Friendship, East Coast Demerara ran amok and butchered his mother, Hyacinth Headley; 52-year-old Maude Hatton; Bunny Joseph, 44; Semple Peters, two; Melissa France, seven; and Shawn Sullivan,16, before beheading a white dog. Of all his victims, Semple was the only one whose head was not completely severed.

Headley was reportedly shot dead by police minutes later, after he rejected their call to “surrender”, and was proceeding towards them, dancing and singing and turning the odd cartwheel, machete in hand.
A known drug addict, Headley often verbally and physically abused his mother, whose many reports to police went unheeded.
WALK BACK IN TIME
The Guyana Chronicle took a walk back in time in Buxton/Friendship yesterday, reliving the crimes of ‘Baby Arthur’, the former soldier who turned to cocaine, became preposterous, and with the aid of a cane-cutter’s cutlass, chopped to death six persons, including his mother, and a white dog.
It was the last day of school that term and all school parties were dismissed earlier than usual, and children who attended were already safe in their homes.
Maude Hatton’s life was taken in full view of her daughter, Yonette. Now 42, Yonette recalls that it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to their village.
“It was a very sorrowful day for the village; many people holler for two or more relatives. I does remember that story so often,” she said. And though she valiantly tries to put on a brave face, deep down inside she’s still suffering emotionally.
To this day, she says, “I don’t play with mad man; I does keep far from them. Meh mother was an innocent person; she was going to buy kerosene oil.”
Her younger sister still blames herself for their mother’s death, saying that had she gone to buy the keroscene oil instead, she would have still been alive.

Maude Hatton had just left her daughter’s house to run an errand when ‘Baby Arthur’, cutlass in hand, jumped off the bicycle he was riding and dealt her a chop to the head.
“The first chop he chop she was in she head,” Yonette recalled. Believing he had killed Ms Hatton, he went away to deal with his own mother.
One Ms. Gloria, a neighbour who saw what had happened, went to Ms Hatton’s rescue and attempted to staunch the bleeding in her head with a towel.
But when her children and other neighbours who had come to her rescue saw ‘Baby Arthur’ returning, still wielding the cutlass, they all ran and left poor Ms Hatton.
Yonette said when her mother saw ‘Baby Arthur’ coming, she said to him, “Is wha ah do yuh?”
His reply was, “You ain’t f***ing dead yet?” And with that, he walked up to her “and buss she throat,” Yonette said.

FIRST TO DIE
Ms. Shirley, who lost her brother, Bunny Joseph that fateful afternoon, still cries. She wept while she spoke with the Guyana Chronicle.
Her family was eating snacks from a school party when her grandson called out to her saying that a man was chopping up a lady.
She came out just in time to hear a girl hollering, saying, “He kill Bunny too.” To this day, she said, every time this time of year comes around, her family remember him, but they’ve never held a memorial service for him.
Her brother was a loving person, Ms Shirley said, and was always helpful to their mom, who mourned his passing before she, too, died some years after.
He was the first to feel the wrath of ‘Baby Arthur’. His head was hacked off as he sat on a culvert on the old Buxton ‘Train-Line Road’. He fell over, dead, in the nearby trench.

DIVINE INTERVENTION
Two-year-old Semple Peters was under a mango tree in his mother’s yard when he was killed.
His sister, Candacie, recalled how her other baby brother, Mark, who was just a few months old and creeping, apparently saved himself from certain death.
She was nine at the time, and her brother, Jermaine, five. The four children were home alone when the incident occurred; their mother was a vendor at the Bourda Market.
She said she’d never really told her mom the truth about what exactly happened that day.
“As little children,” Candacie recalled, “you run to see wha happen. Me and ‘Jerry’ (that’s short for Jermaine), we run to see wha happen to Maude Hatton. And by de time we went home back, we found our brother (Semple) under the mango tree. Jermaine pick him up and take him inside.”
Surprisingly, the door was locked! And there was no sign of Mark!

“Maybe,” she surmised, “he pushed the door and it locked and he got saved. It was God; nobody else… I never told my mother where we were; we never tell she unto this day where we were when that happened.”
The family would later move out of the house. She recalls only ever passing there once since they moved.
“The feelings weren’t right; I felt uncomfortable, so I said I wouldn’t walk back there,” Candacie said.
She said it was not until ten years after that event that she heard her mother recount tearfully the tale of Semple’s death. And that was after Jermaine was shot dead on October 19, 2004 during a violent exchange between the police and a ‘gunmen’ at Buxton. He was just 15.

NO LONGER THE SAME
As residents said yesterday that December is no longer the same for Buxton/Friendship, since it brings back memories of the day they refere to as the most dreadful in their lives.
Buxton/Friendship has been a place labelled for bad, but though residents there knew that there was the presence of good, evil presented itself in the form of ‘Baby Arthur’.
It was one of those murderous encounters that some would refer to as a massacre, especially in light of the theatrical-like fashion in which it was executed, to the cy of, “Ten to one is murder! Ten to one is murder!”
Deon, an eyewitness, recalled yesterday that those were the only statements in Baby Arthur’s uninterrupted echoes as he paraded upon a next-door bridge, his eyes red as never before, and saliva drooling from his mouth.
It was a sight no one had ever before seen, and as a result, he and another friend decided not to walk past where the man stood.
“We done know that he nah normal; he used to go and come, go and come. We just stand up for about a 15-minutes and we watching the performance wid he pon the bridge. Between the day, we deh sitting down between this same area and he come fuh borrow cutlass from them boy,” Deon said.
He first entered Deon’s yard, arguing with his mother to lend him a cutlass after he searched where she usually hid hers. But on that particular day, the blade went missing. He then went into the yard next door, and argued with young men who were cooking there for a cutlass, before getting angry and walking out of the yard.
A young boy was on the road, and ‘Baby Arthur’ held him up and tried to impale him on a pointed cast-iron fence. But the child skillfully wriggled out of his grip, hurting himself in the process.
The blood-thirsty man rode away on a bicycle towards the old ‘Train-Line Road’,
snatched a cutlass from a man called ‘Yam’ who sold water coconut, and rode away shedding blood and taking lives.
Deon was the oldest of the children in a house the man approached last. He armed himself with a cutlass to protect his mom and the other children, while the killer tried to enter.
The neighbour’s dog rushed him and he swung the blade, severing its head from its body, when police arrived.
“As he going to the crowd,” Deon recalled, “the police start open fire pun he. And this man start ‘back-flick’; he used to do karate.
“He end up start flick, flick, flick and start lashing bullet. And everybody want know if he gon kill these police.”
He would eventually fall to the ground, mortally wounded, in front of the police.

By Shauna Jemmott