HOURS after the Guyana Police Force issued a wanted bulletin for his arrest on Friday, Donald Shariff, aged 29, known as ‘Ducky’, of Patrick Dam, Angoy’s Avenue, New Amsterdam, was found hiding out in Mahdia.

Shariff, who was arrested on Friday, is wanted for questioning into the murder, on March 8, of fellow villager, Keron Nicholson, of Patrick Dam, Angoy’s Avenue, a little squatter settlement just outside of New Amsterdam.

His arrest was spearheaded by Regional Commander, Superintendent Ramesh Ashram, who, accompanied by Detective Sergeant 16473 Conway, and Lance Corporal 2142 Ali, went to Stone Creek Backdam, in Mahdia, where they found the fugitive.

On March 8, Marley Ross, a serving member of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), recalled seeing a crowd gathered on Patrick Dam at around 20:00hrs, and, on drawing closer, saw that what had caught their attention was a man lying comatose on the road, with a gaping wound on his forehead.

The injured man, who turned out to be Nicholson, Ross’s cousin, was hurriedly taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital, but his condition was so serious he was immediately transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital Georgetown, where he rallied a few days but later died.

Initial reports were that he was severely beaten about the body during a brawl with another man in Mount Sinai, a community not too far from where he lived on Patrick Dam, on the said eastern fringes of New Amsterdam.

At first, residents in the former squatting community were not too forthcoming with information, but word on the ground was that the squabble was over the indiscriminate firing of gunshots near the residence of one of Shariff’s relatives.