The Demerara Bank staff last night held a silent lamplight vigil in remembrance of their fallen colleague Sheema Mangar even as the police say they are looking for a second suspect in the slaying of the young woman.
Colleagues of the 20-year-old woman retraced her last walk from the bank at Camp Street and South Road to the Camp Street and North Road junction and planted a wooden cross bearing her name on the traffic island at Camp and Church streets. The gathering of just under 100 persons stood silently for several minutes opposite the Bedford Methodist Church where Mangar had been standing when her cellular phone was snatched and the brutal aftermath unfolded.
Bank representative Sonia McCurdy said “she was a silent person so we held a silent vigil.” She added that they felt Mangar’s loss “tremendously” and the idea behind last night’s activity was to remind people that “crime is still alive.”
The police force held one suspect on Monday and also impounded a car believed to have been used in Friday night’s robbery in which Mangar was hit down and dragged along Camp Street when she tried to stop the bandit from fleeing with her cellular phone.
Police Commissioner Henry Greene yesterday said they had checked the telephone records and they showed that “her telephone is not in use. We managed to seize the car and an owner of a car which we found had some dents and some other things that suggest that it was involved in some accident and we are looking for another person,” Greene stated.
He added that they are treating the incident as a murder. Sheema, who is survived by her parents and younger brother Jason, would have celebrated her 21st birthday next month. She will be buried today at the Good Hope Cemetery following viewings at her church and home.
