–call $100,000 offer ‘insult to injury’

By Shauna Jemmott

THE government is offering the relatives of each of the 17 men who perished during the recent riot at the Camp Street jail $100,000 to help bury their dead; but the offer has been largely deemed woefully inadequate.While some say they’d just as soon bury their dead on their own accord, others are saying the government needs to do better than that.

Paulann Gilkes, mother of 28-year-old Delroy Williams, one of the 17, is more concerned about the welfare of her other son, 27-year-old Leroy Williams, who’s also in the Camp Street jail. She said he has since told her he now wants to die, too, having had the horrifying experience of witnessing his brother burn to death. As such, she’s calling on the relevant authorities to do whatever it takes to ensure that he receives proper medical care, because she cannot bear the thought of losing another child.

“I need to get him to go to the doctor or something; to get some check-up or something, because, when I talk to him the other day, he said that if he brother die, is best he die too. But I cyan lose two kids,” the bereaved woman said.

She said the mere thought of it is giving her a headache. “I need my other son to come out of there; I need my other son to get look after. My head is hurting me,” she said.

Another son of hers, Michael Williams, echoed similar concerns. “My other brother, Leroy, saw Delroy burn to death! He told us he was calling fuh he, ‘Delroy! Delroy!’ and he ain’t hearing nothing…

“My other brother in there with trauma. My brother ain’t even speaking; he ain’t even eating, because he stand up and watch he brother burn to death!” a distraught Michael said.

The Williams brothers were among four gold miners charged with the murder of 17-year-old Azaad Potter, also a miner, on October 21, 2014 at Konawaruk, on the Essequibo River. Their co-defendants are Quincy King and Uma Kant.

NOTHING POSITIVE
Of the family’s meeting yesterday with officials from the Ministry of Social Protection and the Guyana Prison Services’ Welfare Department, Michael Williams as good as said it was a waste of time.

“Nothing positive come out of it! They said that if we want to bury the family, they gon give us $100,000 to help out; and if we don’t want to bury the family, they gon bury it,” Michael said. He added: “Madame, a $100,000 cyan even buy a casket! I wasn’t expecting anything, because we already made up our mind to bury our brother.”

Besides, Williams says, he has every reason to believe that his brother was murdered; and though his family is prepared to bury their dead without the proposed assistance, they want justice.

“No justice! They murder them!” he shouted, adding that he’s seen footage on social media whereby surviving prisoners are saying what transpired on the day in question was plain murder.

“It got footage on Facebook that the prisoners sending all the time,” Michael Williams said. “We don’t want compensation, we want justice! We want those who murder them to be charged, to be put in front of the court just like how they said they did wrong and they was put in front the court!”

INSULT TO INJURY
Onika Marques is one of those who said they’re dissatisfied with the $100,000 offer. She says what the government has done in essence is “to add insult to injury.”

Her nephews, Jermain Otto, 26, and Randolph Marques, 20, were both remanded on separate charges of murder. The latter was also sentenced to two years’ imprisonment after he and four other prisoners had escaped from the Georgetown Magistrates Court lock-ups in 2014.

Otto, a pork-knocker, was last year committed to stand trial, along with 21–year-old Travis McDougall, for the murder of businessman Ashok Raghoo, following a robbery in 2014 outside of the Botanical Gardens on Vlissengen Road, here in the city.

Autopsies performed on each of their bodies yesterday revealed that Marques died of suffocation while Otto was burnt to death, the woman told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday outside the prison’s sports club on Camp Street, just across the way from the jail.

She pointed out that her family has lost two youths in the prison riot, and since they were in the government’s care when they died — were killed in the fire — it is unfair for the family to be given such a small amount of money for their burial.

“I think the President could have done something better,” Marques said, adding: “It is not fair what they call we out we house fuh tell we here today. We could afford fuh bury we family, but you gon watch we in we face and tell we y’all gon give we a hundred thousand?!”

She is concerned that when the families would have collected the cash, they would receive no other form of compensation, or justice.
“Now when we collect that $100,000, is finish they finish with we just so, yuh know! We don’t want this! We want something better! I was expecting better than this would have come… Even self if the funeral cost a million dollars, come with half; you can’t just give we $100,000 and loose we in de wilderness like that! It is unfair! I ain’t satisfied with what they tell me at all up there! Is two of dem I lost in de fire; I’m not satisfied with that!”

Marques told the Guyana Chronicle that the families are anxious to hear about the outcome of investigations into the deaths of the prisoners, which prison officials told them have not yet been revealed by the police.
She said her sister, Kim Marques, Otto’s mother, resides overseas and has been hospitalised with high blood pressure after receiving the news of her son’s tragic death.

The single-parent mother of Shaka McKenzie cried bitterly yesterday as she told the press that $100,000 cannot bury her son.
The woman said McKenzie was charged with armed robbery in November last, and was remanded to prison after entering a plea of not guilty. He was accused of robbing Rishi Ramdani of a silver band, a Blackberry cellular phone, and $100,000.

McKenzie’s mother had on Friday told this publication at her home that she has no money to bury her only son, whom she had awakened from his bed and handed over to police when they visited her home late last year.

Crying throughout the conversation with the media, she said she is still in confusion, and scarcely understands what the officials who met the families of the dead were saying to them.

“Hundred thousand dollars could bring back me son, me first born?! I looking for justice; I cyan tek a $100,000 fuh bury me son!” the woman cried.