A man of unsound mind was fatally shot yesterday afternoon by one of two armed policemen whom he reportedly attacked with a bread knife on Robb Street.
He has been identified as Brian Luckie known as ‘Kussum’. The man, who was also homeless, died about half an hour after he was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital in a police vehicle. He last known address was somewhere in D’Urban Street.
Luckie was shot just above the navel and the bullet exited his body and damaged an accountant’s car.
When Stabroek News arrived on the scene, the man was lying on the roadway writhing in pain with blood pouring. A crowd had gathered and two police officers, one of whom had fired the fatal shot, were standing over the body and calling for back-up.
“We are standing over a dying man,” one of the obviously agitated police officers said into his radio set. The crowd became riled up as they questioned the lawmen as to why they had to shoot a mentally ill man. The two officers are from the batch that was placed on street patrol late last year during the upsurge in armed robberies. They can usually be seen patrolling in pairs, dressed in long-sleeved blue jumpers and trousers, each armed with a high-powered weapon.
“I tell he to drop the knife but he fire juks at me,” the officer who fired the shot said as he continued to radio for help.
A public-spirited citizen took his rag and attempted to staunch the haemorrhaging but the man continued to bleed as one of the officers shouted at the crowd to step back to give him air. Shortly after, a police minibus turned up with three ranks and the man was lifted by his hands and feet by the two officers and placed in the vehicle. While he had been waiting, the officer stood on the bread knife. He picked it up just before he entered the vehicle.
One witness said the man was seen with the bread knife and had attacked the lawmen who ordered him to drop it. He refused and walked away from the police officers who followed him and continued to order him to drop the knife. He turned and “fire plenty juks at the police” who then fired a warning shot in the air, but the man still did not drop the knife. He was then shot.
There were mixed sentiments on the street following the shooting.
An angry Ishmael Yusuf, the owner of the damaged vehicle, PKK 3201, said he could not understand why the officers could not have apprehended the man. “Why deh had to shoot the mad man? Two policemen with big gun can’t apprehend a mad man with a knife?
They had to shoot the man and then damage me car,” he argued.
He said he did not expect to get any compensation for the damage and that no one would want to speak to him because he made his views public and because the country is “communist”.
“If it was Canada or America you woulda get compensation but not in Guyana,” he argued.
Another man who witnessed the shooting said the police had no alternative but to shoot the man. “He shoulda drop the knife. He always walking around with knife and attacking people. He shoulda drop the knife. He is an ex-policeman he know the law,” the man said.
When it was pointed out to the man that the officers followed the man after he did not drop the knife the man said they had a right.
“You woulda want walking down the road and a mad man stab you sisteren? He woulda get off and you woulda dead,” the man said.
Others on the scene felt that the policeman could have shot the man in his leg or could have hit him with the gun. They pointed out that the man was very frail and could have easily been overpowered.
Stabroek News was unable to get a comment from the police on the incident. (Oluatoyin Alleyne and Christopher Yaw)
