A 17-year-old was on Thursday evening fatally stabbed, in what was the culmination of a prolonged feud with another young man who is currently in police custody.
Dead is Reyad Khan of Lot 737 Section, ‘C’ Golden Grove, East Bank Demerara, who died days shy of his next birthday.
He was fatally stabbed several times about the body at 17th Street, Diamond, also on the East Bank of Demerara, by an 18-year-old resident of the area. Khan was later pronounced dead on arrival at the Diamond Diagnostic Centre.
According to police, the initial investigations have revealed that Khan and the other man had an altercation previously. At his home yesterday, Khan’s mother was inconsolable as she kept weeping, saying amid sobs, “Dem kill me son, and he only come back Thursday.”
According to Khan’s older sister Aaliyah Khan, they received a call around 6.30 pm on Thursday, informing them that her brother was “lying in a pool of blood on 17th Street.”
She said the entire family rushed to the scene and discovered her brother with a gaping wound, gasping for breath in a pool of blood. She added that he was immediately rushed to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre.
“When we took him to the Diamond hospital the doctors did not allow anyone to go in with him and then I left to come home and pick up some stuff for him and when I got back there they told me that he’s gone,” the woman said, weeping.
Recounting how the young Khan reached the location where he was stabbed, his sister said he had gone walking to pick up another cousin so they could go to the nearby gym to workout.
“He was walking and then a group of boys banked him and they beat and stabbed him. As far as we know they did not take anything from him,” she said, while ruling out the possibility of a robbery.
The woman added that she was unsure of the weapon used to murder her brother but said that they were told it was either a broken bottle or a knife.
She said she and her brother had returned from New York on Friday last. He was scheduled to go back in August.
“We go back and forth and we try to let him spend most of time over there [New York] rather than here. He was just the other day saying that he will go and do a course [in Civil Engineering) over there and I said ‘no, stay until I go back and you will stay with me,’ because I don’t want him staying with no one but he is now dead,” she lamented.
The grieving woman related that her brother was a very “intelligent and dedicated person,” who had no grievances with anyone as far as the family knew. She added that when he wrote the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examination a few years ago, he was the top student of his school, the Academy of Professional Studies, and his family believed he would have become a very successful young man.
Khan’s sister added that the death of her brother has hit the family hard since he was a lovable and caring person. Khan would have celebrated his 18th birthday on July 3.
