Connections to the underworld are emerging in the latest `hit’ which left Dave `Jason’ Wills’s body riddled with bullets on Thursday night and police continue to question two persons who were with him in the Meadowbrook house at the time.
Law enforcement officers do not believe that it was by coincidence the two persons left Wills’s company mere seconds before he died in a hail of bullets.
The 33-year-old, who was involved in a gold mining operation in Mahdia, died after a gunman jumped the gate and fired a volley of shots.
“There are no arrests as yet but the two people that he was staying with are still being questioned,” acting Commissioner of Police Leroy Brumell told Stabroek News last evening.
A senior police officer told this newspaper that the duo was not ruled out as suspects. The source said that there were inconsistencies in the duo’s story and that police find it odd that the two left Wills’s presence for another part of the house just shortly before he was riddled with bullets. “We are looking at this from every angle and no one has been ruled out…it is strange that the gunman not only knew exactly where in the house he was but that that the people who he was with left him and then gunfire,” the source said.
According to a police source, the father of seven was shot about seven times about the body. The source said that the man was in the living room picking out DVDs to begin watching when the gunman jumped the fence, flung open the door and started firing. When Stabroek News visited Wills’ relatives on the West Bank Demerara, his maternal grandmother was inconsolable. She informed that his mother had only departed Guyana on Thursday morning and that the woman was so devastated on hearing of her only son’s death that a doctor had to be called to have her sedated. Wills’ grandmother said they were at a loss as he had no known enemies and was always a fun-loving person dedicated to his family. She fondly told of the first six years he spent in Guyana before migrating. As an adolescent, his younger sister was born and his grandmother told of the fatherly role he took on in taking care of her. She declined to discuss why he was deported.
The mother of his youngest child wept as she told of how she had begged him to return to Mahdia with her on Monday. She said that she had spoken to him, from Mahdia, shortly before he was killed. “Ow a beg he, a seh Dave leh we go home but he say `wait with meh and both a we going go same time,’” the woman cried as the toddler held on to her. When she was able to contain herself, she re-enacted some of the humorous stories he shared as he played with his grandmother.
Wills’s autopsy will be performed on Monday as police continue their investigations. The police also said that Wills had been deported from the United States after serving time for drug trafficking six years ago. While he is not known to the police for any crimes, it was explained that his close friends are linked to the narco-underworld. He was a friend of Intaz Mohamed, the 38-year-old man who was also killed execution-style as he tried to escape his ‘hitman’ at the Cool Breeze hotel in West Ruimveldt two weeks ago. Both men were also former associates of Ricardo Rodrigues, Shaheed Roger Khan’s bodyguard. Rodrigues was killed in similar fashion last year. Police believe that Wills’ and Mohamed’s killings are related.
Police sources say there is an emerging link between the gold trade and the laundering of proceeds from the narcotics business.
“The gold boom has its own backlash. You find that the criminals now working in the backdams and some say they gone to make a good life, but is for who? It is for the drug dealer who trying to wash his money and give an appearance that he doing something legit…” a senior police told Stabroek News yesterday.
