Police silence on the Middleton Street shooting incident that left Arjune Narine Singh dead just over two months ago has forced his family to launch a public appeal for anyone with information to come forward and assist with the investigation.
Still hurt, and without any answers, relatives hope someone would come forward and bring closure to the matter. No suspect has been ever identified in the shooting and to date there have been no new developments.
“We are asking, pleading, begging, that anyone who has any information that can help find who committed this brutal crime to come forward. Somewhere out on the streets of Georgetown the persons who did this are still around. They’re capable of more violence,” his mother, Nadia Singh said in an email to Stabroek News from the United States on Friday.
Singh said she was broken hearted and pointed out that Ryan was her joy and her only son; a loving and caring son. She said her grief was so much it was difficult to put one foot in front of the other. She remembered her son as someone who loved people and never looked down on anyone.
The woman said the city was not safe from random violence until whoever killed her son was found. She said the perpetrators of the attack needed to be found if the city was going to keep breathing, particularly if people were going to let their children out of their homes.
She expressed hope that people would not accept such violence and senseless killing that brought an end to her son’s life and called on persons with information to come forward and aid the police. According to her, there must be persons out there with information.
“Our son felt happy, alive and safe, and his life ended when he was shot in the head. He was driving home when his car stopped at a police checkpoint. He was strapped in his car and he didn’t take a chance when gunmen drove up and open murderous fire killing him in the process,” Nadia Singh said.
She added that there was still good in Guyana and urged anyone with information on the incident to share it since it might save an innocent life. In the wake of the shooting at Middleton Street the police operation was heavily criticized but no official word was ever released as to whether there was an internal police probe of whether the checkpoint was properly authorized. The police force has limited its response to merely stating that there was nothing odd about the operation.
On May 14 around 9.30 pm on a narrow, poorly lit Middleton Street two police ranks; one in uniform and the other in plain clothes chose to stop a car and check documents belonging to its occupants thus creating a traffic block due to the manner in which the uniform rank was positioned. This resulted in a backup of two vehicles — Singh’s and Larry Gursahai who was behind Singh.
Within a few minutes of them being stalled on the road a car pulled up alongside the checkpoint, a gunman disembarked and a fusillade erupted. Singh was fatally wounded and Gursahai also sustained injuries. The uniform rank fled the scene in the injured Gursahai’s vehicle stopping for the man to exit after Gursahai refused to drive to the Kitty police station. The other rank jumped into a nearby ditch and later emerged to call for backup.
Arjune Narine Singh’s family had previously rejected assertions that he was executed and call for an intensive police probe. They repeatedly said that they are in the dark about everything surrounding his death.
“The police have visited our home and asked questions about a particular person but none of us know that individual and as far as we know, he [Singh] did not know that person either”, a relative told this newspaper last month.
According to the relative, the family has repeatedly pressed the force to find out who were the police at the checkpoint that night and what exactly they did before and after Singh was shot but got no answers. The relative expressed hope that things will come to light in time.
