– police seeking friend
In a dramatic twist of events, police yesterday unearthed eight kilogrammes of cocaine in the fuel tank of the car clothes vendor Raphael Piggott was driving when he was gunned down in Cummings Lodge on Saturday.
This new development may point to the motive for the man’s killing and followed the discovery of a large quantity of foreign currency in the vehicle, police said in a press release last night.
The police are now looking for the man Piggott had gone to drop home when he was shot dead by a lone gunman.
According to the statement, further intelligence garnered during investigations by the police into the murder of the 26-year-old businessman and Guyhoc Park resident, led to a detailed search of his motor vehicle.
During the search, the police found eight packets of cocaine with a weight of eight kilogrammes concealed in the fuel tank of the vehicle to which some adjustments had been made.
The release said that initially the police had found US$14,041 and 1,100 euros in the vehicle at the scene of the incident. The money is the custody of the police.
The police said they are also in the process of making efforts to locate Vincent Da Costa of Sixth Street, Cummings Lodge, East Coast Demerara, who was in the vehicle with Piggott at the time of the shooting.
Piggott was shot and killed by an armed gunman at Sixth Street, Cummings Lodge around 5.15 pm on Saturday and was subsequently pronounced dead at a private hospital.
The man’s reputed wife had told Stabroek News on Sunday that they had just returned from Suriname, where they had gone to do some Christmas shopping. Her husband was dropping off his friend (Da Costa), who had accompanied them, at his Sixth Street, Cummings Lodge home. She was sitting in the front seat while the friend was in the back seat.
She had recounted that they had reached the lot where the friend was to be dropped off, but he had not exited as yet as her husband wanted to turn the car around. She said she knew something was wrong when Piggott reversed the car in a rash manner and then she saw him look through the window.
It was at this point that she saw a man with a gun in his hand walk up to the car and before she could react two shots were fired hitting Piggott in the back.
Shortly after that the car crashed into a fence before coming to rest in the yard of the Trooper Taxi Service in Sixth Street.
The woman had told this newspaper too that since the incident, she had not seen the friend they had gone to drop off.
According to her, her husband had walked and sold clothes and spare parts and also worked his car as a taxi.
