Marques sustained a gunshot wound to the right thigh after her boyfriend of five months shot 17-year-old Fernandes and she rushed to the boy’s assistance. Police are yet to arrest the shooter who Crime Chief Seelal Persaud had said was known to police and was not a licensed firearm holder.
The woman told Stabroek News that Fernandes was released from the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) last Wednesday afternoon. How-ever, the teen is still in pain the bullet is still lodged in his chest. Doctors, according to Marques, have said that it may take “months or even years” before the bullet can be removed.
Police, in a press release had said Marques and the suspect had an argument during which he allegedly assaulted her and Fernandes. The 17-year-old, according to police, “was in the vicinity” and intervened in the couple’s argument. The suspect then left, returned with a firearm and discharged rounds hitting Fernandes in his chest and Marques in her right thigh.
Marques, in a version somewhat different from that reported by police, had told this newspaper that shortly after 11 pm on Sunday her boyfriend had “too much to drink” and an argument erupted between them at a D’Urban Street, Georgetown club.
The woman said she knew something was not right and demanded to return to her Riverview, Georgetown home. During, what she’d described as a terrifying five-minute drive to her home, her lover had threatened to “crash the car” with her in it. After they arrived at the narrow bridge which leads to her Lot 15 Sea dam Riverview, Ruimveldt Georgetown home the man renewed his threat to kill her. “…and he told me that he was coming back here to shoot me…,” Marques said.
Marques was standing at the “street corner” along with Fernandes and other persons when her boyfriend returned a short time later to execute his threat and after wounding the woman and the teen he escaped.
Since the incident, Marques said she has been contacted by the man and his relatives who initially offered to compensate her but became threatening when she refused. One of the suspect’s relatives, the woman said, showed up at her house last Monday night and “created a scene.
“This woman and somebody else show up at my house Monday night and start cussing up and creating a scene. Then Tuesday the woman come to the hospital and tell me that they going to give me $500,000 if I drop the matter but I ain’t dropping nothing.”
The woman said she had also received threatening messages from the suspect and his relatives. One message, she reported, warned her that if she didn’t “drop the story” then her family would “bawl for her”. Marques also said that the suspect’s relative who was at her house on Monday threatened to break her legs if they saw her “on the road.
“Right now I am afraid to go on the road because they telling me that they going to beat me and break up my legs and so.”
The distressed woman has since reported the threats to police but says she is not satisfied by the response she received. Police, she alleged, are not “taking me seriously” and it is very frustrating.
“Look the most recent call I get from him [the suspect] he tell me that he going to kill my family and Mark [Fernandes] family and is like I sitting in my house waiting for him to come because I don’t feel the police helping much,” Marques stated.
