-police ID suspect

Hours after being shot to the head by an unknown assailant, Bascal Johnson succumbed early yesterday morning.

Bascal Johnson, 44, of Lot 420 East Ruimveldt, Georgetown was admitted to the Georgetown Public Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) around 11 pm on Sunday. Just over two hours before his admission to the medical institution that night, Johnson was shot above the right eye.

At the time of the incident, Bascal, also known as Pascal, and a woman with whom he reportedly shared a relationship were standing in an empty lot along Laing Avenue. The woman was taken into police custody for questioning that night and has since been released.

Meanwhile, Crime Chief Seelall Persaud told Stabroek News yesterday afternoon that police had a suspect in Johnson’s case but were yet to make an arrest. Police yesterday said Johnson and the woman had a “misunderstanding over some money,” during which “a man confronted him and shot him to his head and escaped.”

A man, who said he was a friend of the deceased, told this newspaper that he was in bed at his Laing Avenue home when he heard what sounded like a single gunshot. When he looked outside, he saw people running in several directions and people crowded around “something” in the empty lot. The man, after further investigation, discovered that it was his friend Johnson, laying on the ground with a gunshot wound just above the right eye.

Shortly after, the man had said, a police patrol which usually ran the area, rushed Johnson to the hospital.

The man was admitted to the ICU where he was attached to a life support machine. “Since last night [Sunday] they told us that he wouldn’t make it,” Shelly Johnson said. “But I was hoping my brother would pull through… He died just before 8 this morning [yesterday].”

Shelly Johnson has since insisted that the woman, who was with her brother at the time he was shot, was not his spouse.

Stabroek News had also learned that hours before the shooting, Johnson had been at the woman’s Laing Avenue home. Johnson, according to his friend, had given the woman $500 but she had wanted $1,000 and subsequently took his cellular phone from him. “I see he [Johnson] talking to she on de Avenue earlier in de day and he was giving her $500 and she try to take $1,000 and then after he didn’t want to give she de $1000 she take away his phone and I heard him tell her that he would come to collect the phone later… I didn’t see him [Johnson] again until I see he with a bullet in he head in that empty lot,” the man reported.

Police sources also told this newspaper that the woman told varying accounts of what happened on Laing Avenue that night. In one version she told police she was talking to Johnson when someone came from behind and shot him. The woman, in yet another version of what had happened, also related that the gunman came rushing towards them, shot Johnson and when she ran, pursued her for a short time before escaping.

On Sunday night, Johnson’s relatives had said they believed the woman “set him up.” They stand by this belief.