By Shauna Jemmott

SEVERAL young women in the community of Hope, East Coast Demerara, have experienced horror at the hands of a lone criminal whose haunt is a burial ground; and with the recent murder of 14-year-old Ann’s Grove resident Malika Hamilton, residents are calling on the police to increase patrols in the community.During a visit to the area on Sunday, the women shared with this publication similar stories of their experience, which began at the ‘black and white bridge’ near the Hope burial ground. They all gave similar descriptions of a man who has not yet been caught, though victims have been complaining to police over two years now.

A mother said that, two years ago, her daughter’s deafening screams led family members to find her secluded between bushes in the burial ground, bound hand and foot and with a cloth looped around her neck. The cloth had been used to strap her mouth, but she managed to get it away from her mouth after crawling some distance away.

The young girl was abandoned there by a man sometime after he had locked her neck in a ‘vice’.

The woman, who lives at the Low Lands Scheme at the front of Hope, said she was sitting in front of her yard after her 18-year-old daughter had telephoned her saying she was just a few minutes away from home. She saw two persons standing by a lamp post just by the bridge leading to the community at the junction of the Hope access road and the East Coast Demerara public road, a few corners away from their home.
She said she saw when the two persons moved away, but was not sure if they had headed into the burial ground or the Hope access road.

After she did not see her daughter coming, she ventured out to the bridge, where she observed a bicycle parked just away from the burial ground bridge, about 20 feet away. The woman said she heard murmurings coming from the burial ground and wondered what someone would be doing there at night, but never knew she was hearing a man threaten her own daughter.

The teenager managed to remove the cloth from around her neck and screamed.

The woman said the family rushed the wounded girl to the Mahaicony Hospital, where she was treated and sent away. She said her daughter’s throat was swollen and she could not eat for days, while her eyes were bloodshot and had already begun to bulge as a result of the choking she had experienced.

Another victim, a 17-year-old, said that on May 30 this year, at about 19:30 hours, she was returning from a friend’s home at Two Friends Village and was approaching the ‘black and white bridge’ when a man came up to her and asked if she knew a man named Mark. She said she answered in the negative, but the man walked behind her. The teen said it was while she was crossing the bridge that the man grabbed her from behind.

“I know I went in by the corner of the bridge, but I didn’t know nothing else,” she told the Guyana Chronicle. She regained consciousness while in the burial ground, even as the man kept dragging her through the mud between the tombs and choking her.

The teen victim said she looked her abuser in his face and asked him if he has no mother, but he only directed more dangerous threats at her. The teen said he told her, “I could lash you in you head and nobody wouldn’t even know you deh here!”

“He choked her. The tiny vessels in her eyes were ruptured, so my daughter’s eyes were ‘blood red,” the girl’s mother said. When she again regained consciousness after being dragged through the length of the burial ground, which covers three corners, her hands were bound behind her back and her mouth was strapped. She, however, made her way to the line, and ran to a house a corner away from the burial ground.

It was the house of another woman who had had a similar experience. The woman, who was 33 years old at the time, said she was on her way out of the area to be picked up by a cousin to attend a show at the National Stadium. It was around 19:30 hours on an evening two years ago.

“He had on all over black. He choke me and I scream and me neighbour them come… Soon as I see this boy walk up to me I suspect something and I scream. Neighbour ran out and then he loose me.”
She said she had managed to grab the man’s neck, and when he ran a piece of his chain was left in her hand. Though the attack occurred a good distance away from her home, she discovered the other part of his chain in her yard, just outside her verandah, two days after.

The woman said neighbours told her a man on a bicycle had visited the area the night after the attack and entered her yard.

The Guyana Chronicle was also told about another woman who was attacked by the bridge and taken into the burial ground. Residents said that woman was the first known victim, and was raped. “She ran out the burial ground and ran up the road naked (screaming),” a resident told the Guyana Chronicle.
The 17-year-old victim said she spotted her attacker sitting by the Hope Bridge last Sunday while walking with her mother. The two ran screaming. The teen’s mother said, too, that one night recently they heard screams coming from the same area, but when residents ran out and checked, they spotted nobody.

“Somebody just scream wildly, and when we run out we didn’t see anybody. We just heard this scream,” the woman told the Guyana Chronicle.

The residents have all declared that a psychopathic man is roaming the area, and they suspect the same man after they received news of the teenager’s death last Tuesday. The fact that Hamilton was strangled and lashed to her head, but not raped, bears resemblance to the attacks in the cemetery at Hope, they said.

One woman described the attacker as having “protruding jawbone, fine face, not too tall, the shoulder is a bit broad, and he is slim,” while the other said, “Not too tall, not too short. He get lil size up top.”

The women are calling for the heightened presence of police and more street lights in the area. “I really glad if justice can be done,” one of the women said.