One of the police constables shot on Friday afternoon during a bid to locate the nine prisoners who had hours before staged a daring escape from the Mazaruni Prison, is still in a serious condition and may have to be flown overseas for further treatment.
Stabroek News was informed that when the surgery was performed on 47-year-old Leonard La Rose early yesterday morning, it was discovered the bullet which was lodged in his body had moved closer to his spine and thus created some complications. He was originally shot in the right shoulder.
Although conscious in the High Dependency Unit of the Georgetown Hospital, the officer is still in severe pain. The Linden resident was among four servicemen who were shot that night as they hunted for the escapees in the forest around the prison.
Prison officers Michael Hosannah, 44, of Smythfield New Amsterdam and Philip Stevenson, 46, of Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara and police constable Richeland Blanhum, 23, of Lot 3 Second Street, La Penitence are in the open ward of the medical institution.
Blanhum was removed from the High Dependency Unit early yesterday afternoon since his condition was deemed not so serious, but when this newspaper saw him shortly after his transfer he was in severe pain. He was shot in the lower leg.
Stevenson was shot in the upper right side of his chest and Hosannah had a gunshot wound to his right shin area. The bullet had passed through his leg.
Police ranks were busy taking statements from the injured men yesterday even as family members and colleagues crowded their bedsides.
Hosannah told this newspaper from his hospital bed that he was attached to a section of the prison as a stock farm officer.
He said that on Friday afternoon he was in the pigpen with twelve inmates when he heard the prison siren, indicating that there was an emergency.
He said he immediately placed the prisoners he had under his command on “lock down” and went across to the main section of the prison.
Hosannah told Stabroek News that as soon as he arrived he was informed of the jailbreak and later teamed up with a colleague, Philip Stevenson, and together with others they got on a tractor and headed up a trail leading from the Mazaruni prison in search of the escapees.
He went on to relate that just after six in the afternoon when they were more than half way up the trail and had stopped to chat they caught sight of figures in the distance.
“While we standing there talking we start to see shadows and then we hear somebody shout ‘warden.'” he recounted.
He said that three of the men in his group had guns while the others were armed with sticks.
He said that neither he nor his other team members recognised the figures and so they discharged rounds which were met by returning fire, as a consequence of which both he and Stevenson sustained injuries.
Hosannah said they were forced to run for cover and left the area aided by the other officers. Even after the exchange of gunfire, he told this newspaper, neither he nor his team members were certain who had shot them since the place was “pitch black.”
“Is only when we reach to Bartica Hospital, then we heard that two policemen were also injured during a shoot-out near the prison,” Hosannah recalled.
He said they had received no information while hunting for the escapees that police officers had joined the search.
It was only later, Hosannah said, that he realized the policemen had come around to Skull Point by river. It was at Skull Point that the shooting occurred.
