Former guard found battered to death near doctor’s office

The bloodied body of a man was found in the place he called home, just behind the North Road and Light Street office of Dr Walter Ramsahoye, by the doctor’s cleaner yesterday morning. One man is reportedly in custody, following the discovery.

The body of Bissoondyal Mangar was found just around 8 am when Mary the cleaner went to open the office. The woman told Stabroek News yesterday that she knew something was wrong as soon as she entered the yard as a side gate was open. She said she went down to the back of the building where saw Mangar, who she knew, lying dead on a piece of mattress with his face bloodied and chop wounds on his only arm.

“I just turn around and run and I call doctor,” the woman said.
When Stabroek News visited the scene the body had already been removed but blood was still evident in the area and police officers were carrying out their investigation.

A small crowd at the corner of North Road and Light Street where the body of Bissoondyal Mangar was found yesterday morning. (Clairmonte Marcus photo)
A small crowd at the corner of North Road and Light Street where the body of Bissoondyal Mangar was found yesterday morning. (Clairmonte Marcus photo)

According to Yvette Marcus, who works at the doctor’s officer, Mangar had worked with the doctor for about four years as a security guard but he was fired about four months ago. She explain-ed that Dr Ramsahoye had discovered something missing and he “said no sense paying a guard and things getting thief so he fired him.”

However, she said, Mangar had no fixed place of abode and as such would still use the back of the doctor’s building to sleep. “Doctor was not too pleased but he felt sorry for him and allowed him,” the woman said. She said that the man, who only had one arm, would spend his days out on the streets doing odd jobs or begging and in the evening he would return to the location to rest his head.

All of his worldly possessions were also kept in the small building behind the doctor’s office. Marcus said Mangar was hired by the doctor following the resignation of the previous security guard with whom Mangar used to “hang around… So when he left doctor just hire him.”

The woman said as far as she knows the man hailed from somewhere in the Canal Number One area and he had told her that he had children. The man had also related that he lost his wife and his arm in a horrific accident and from since then his life had gone on a downward spiral. Initially, he had lived with a brother following the accident but he later left and had been living on the streets.

“But he would keep in contact with his family because sometimes he would tell me that he sell orange from his brother because he had a farm. And the other day he said that his sister came in the country and he went and see her,” the woman said.

It is not clear why the man was murdered or who would have committed the act but Marcus said he usually imbibed alcohol so she was not sure if that was the cause of his death. Stabroek News understands also that one man, who used to be with Mangar in the doctor’s yard, has since been taken into custody.