…inmate recounts praying for help during deadly fire

By Shauna Jemmott
AS THE Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the Georgetown Prison riots continued yesterday, a high-level team attached to the CoI visited the Georgetown Prisons and was given an on-location explanation of what transpired during the Prison riots, resulting in the deaths of seventeen remand prisoners earlier this month.The team, led by Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry (CoI), Justice James Patterson (Rtd.), included Commissioner Dale Erskine; Guyana Bar Association (GBA) President, Attorney-at-law Christopher Ram; CoI Counsel, Excellence Dazzell; and Barrister and Solicitor Selwyn Pieters.

The team was accompanied by members of the media, who were not allowed to use their cameras for security purposes.

Remand prisoner Michael Lewis, 39, who had earlier testified before the CoI, was given the opportunity to give an on-site account of what transpired on March 3 at the Capital A and B blocks of the Georgetown Prison. Lewis had earlier testified before the CoI, at the Ministry of the Presidency building on Waterloo Street, that on the day in question, he’d prayed to Allah as the fire drew dangerously close to where he was lying on the ground, gasping for air by a locked door made of iron grills and ‘riffle mesh’.

CALLING ON ALLAH
Crying as he spoke, Lewis recalled that after witnessing fellow prisoner Rayon Paddy being burnt alive, he felt so helpless he began to cry out. “I just keep praying and call fuh Allah open the door,” he disclosed under cross-examination by Christopher Ram.

But cry as he and other prisoners might for help as the fire raged, Lewis said, “No officer ain’t try once fuh rescue we, sir.”
And this was in spite of observing them more than once the week before, doing fire drills, practising how to throw prisoners on their shoulders and run with them to safety in the event of a fire.
Lewis recalled that on March 3, after walking out of Capital A alive, “the officer watched me like if is a miracle.”

He said the reason he could not complete the written statement he’d submitted to the CoI himself was because he was running late for the inquiry. “De morning dem hurry me up to come to dis inquiry,” Lewis said, so he apparently asked another prisoner to do it for him, though he signed it himself.

Back to his testimony, Lewis said prisoners are usually “treated like beast”. A case in point, he said, was being in pain and asking to see the ‘Chief’, only to be told repeatedly by prison officers to “hold on”. Noting that the wait could go on for days on end, Lewis said it is not until the prisoner begins to “bang at the door” that the ‘Chief’ would appear, and help would be forthcoming.

THAT FATEFUL MORNING
Recalling what transpired on the morning of March 3, Lewis said: “That particular morning, all the other location get feed-up, but our location didn’t get feed-up.”
The prisoner said a regular morning meal would comprise of “porridge, sometimes bare tea, and sometimes tea-bag tea, Sir.” This, he said, usually happens between 07:00 and 09:00 hours daily. On some Wednesdays, he said, they would get bread.

The March 3 fire, he recalled, started at sometime between 11:00 hours to after 12:00 hours.
Earlier into his testimony, while being led through evidence by Counsel Dazzell, Lewis had said that on the night of March 2, he was sleeping when he felt droplets of water falling on him. On awaking, he came to realise that a fire was being put out in the corridor outside the prison cells.
He also said a second fire had been lit, but had been put out when the fire tender arrived on the scene. He recalled seeing the media on the scene and hearing his fellow inmates calling out to them.

His exact words were, “The inmates start to shout; to shout out their problems to the media.”

The riot was on ‘Capital A’ division of the prisons, which is where he was housed. He said that on the morning of March 3, prison officers had returned to the building to carry out another search.

He explained that when a search is being carried out, prisoners are asked to evacuate the dormitory and enter into an area called ‘the cage’ until the officers complete their search. They would then be allowed to return to the ‘dorm’.

On that particular morning, Lewis said, they were asked to evacuate the building; so he packed his belongings and was about to head to the door, two buckets and a pillowcase in his hands, when he heard an officer say: “Lock the door!”

On hearing that, Lewis said: “I went back to my bed space. I was standing up by my bed and watching some other prisoners. They were saying officers beating prisoners.”

As he stood there, Lewis said, he recalled seeing some prisoners trying to break through the thin concrete wall dividing Capital A and Capital B.

HOLD ONE HEAD
He also recalled seeing former Guyana Defence Force (GDF) soldier Rayon Paddy, who died of smoke inhalation as a result of the fire, and another prisoner crossing over into Capital B and telling prisoners there, “Ya’ll don’t go out from here; leh we hold one head.”

He then noticed a fire starting to blaze at the exact spot where the wall was broken between the two dormitories, and prison officers using fire extinguishers to put it out. He also recalled seeing two tear gas canisters being hurled into Capital A, and hearing Paddy say, “Go low; is tear gas.”

And as the entire dormitory became ‘hazy’, he said, prisoners began running helter-skelter in search of ventilation and water, and hollering at the tops of their lungs while covering their faces.

He distinctly recalls Paddy lying there right next to him and 13 others, flat on the ground, gasping for breath by a “riffle mesh” door while some other prisoners sought relief elsewhere.

Many, he said, “were hollering for help.” Some openly wept while others repeatedly cried, “Ow meh eye; me eye…!” or “Ow, meh face burning; open the door!” Then, all of a sudden there was silence.

Lewis said he ran to the bathroom and tried turning on the pipe there, but no water flowed; so his next course of action was to lie flat on his stomach, face up against the grill, which he did for over an hour, wetting his face every now and then with bottled water he’d somehow managed to lay his hands on. All the while, he said, he watched anxiously as the fire drew dangerously close.

Lewis became emotional as he spoke of how he and other prisoners were “hollering for help over a hour and change and no officer come to help… The fire was close to us in the building, and the firemen dem were spraying water close to us.”
Then, as if by a miracle, another prisoner, Steve Bacchus, who was recently sentenced and moved to another division, accompanied by one Officer Crawford and fire police, arrived and attempted to break the door with sledge hammer.
Shortly thereafter, he said, Bacchus told the surviving prisoners the front door was open, and they ran out.

Under cross-examination by Barrister Selwyn Pieters, representing the Guyana Prison Service and Guyana Police Force, Lewis said that during the protest, prisoners were shouting, “Justice delayed; justice denied” and he, too, joined in the shouting and saying “that I was also tortured by Mr. Caesar (a policeman) for four days.”