On Monday last, the body of 14-year-old Akeem Grimmond was found in a drain some 300 feet away from his home; he had been suffocated and a man has since been held in connection with his murder. The only link the accused had to the child was that they sometimes shared the same space. Akeem, according to his parents, was a Science enthusiast who had dreams of pursuing studies in that field. He was also a part-time cow herder, who would take cows to pasture in the mornings and then fetch them back in the afternoons. He went missing on Saturday, August 20, having left home to perform his usual task. Searches were conducted when he did not return home that afternoon as was the norm. His dead body was found two days later.
Questions have been raised as to why a 14-year-old would have been associating with the suspect, who had been accused of murder in the past. But was there really any association? There is a very real possibility that Akeem was killed simply because there was an opportunity for his murderer to do so.
Akeem’s murder follows that of another 14-year-old. Sometime between August 8 and 9, Malika Hamilton of Two Sisters Village, East Coast Demerara, was killed in the Hope Canal, also not far from her home. Malika had left home in an emotional state on August 8, reportedly following a telephone conversation with her father. It was assumed based on what she said to relatives before leaving home that the two had had a row over something.
She, like Akeem, failed to return home and also did not show up at a relative’s home where she was reportedly heading. Her body was found the next day, floating in the canal. A man, Alan Reid, has since been charged with her murder.
The phenomenon of motiveless murder might not occur often, but it is real. There are people who kill simply because they can; because they see a potential victim—usually someone perceived as defenceless, like a woman or a child—and there is a window of opportunity. These are the types of crimes that tend to remain mostly unsolved, unless there was an eyewitness or the killer confesses. The persons who commit such crimes—so-called ‘thrill killers’—often tend to have mental health issues that are not discernable and have not been diagnosed.
In the developed world, police forces employ psychologists who study murder suspects, and not just in motiveless murders but in general. It is believed that understanding what goes on in the mind of a murderer can help to not just solve the case being studied, but build profiles of murderers. This is vital information that can sometimes help prevent homicides, but usually allows for the quicker solving of complex cases.
Unfortunately, Guyana is light years away from the use of such modern medical science in crime solving. Today, over eight years after the Lindo Creek massacre when police faced a conundrum in identifying the burnt skulls and bones of eight miners, there is still no functioning police forensic laboratory capable of carrying out DNA analysis. To date also, no one with the potential has been sent for any such training. It is anyone’s guess whether the country even has a pool of qualified persons from which the force could draw in the event that it managed to get its lab up and running. Samples for such testing in crucial cases are still being sent overseas with months going by before the results are available.
While for the most part victims know their killers—there is a very high incidence of domestic violence homicides in Guyana and several have seen children also being murdered—the cases where the murderer is a stranger tend to remain unsolved. This is especially so in the event that there is no confession and no eyewitness, as in the September 2013 murder of 14-year-old Ryan Persaud of Vive la Force, West Bank Demerara who was shot in the back, reportedly by someone out in the river on a boat with a high-powered rifle. The inability to solve such cases leaves the door open for the thrill killer to strike again.
