Sheema Mangar’s parents frustrated over delay in test results

The frustrated parents of Sheema Mangar who was run over by a car last September during a robbery are once again questioning the delay in getting the results of fabric samples and are now convinced that the authorities care little about their pain and suffering.

Radica Thakoor and Lalbachan Mangar told Stabroek News last week that the police have now left them in a confused state and they are unsure to whom they must turn next.
Thakoor said that last November Police Commis-sioner Henry Greene told them that the results of the tests to determine whether the fabric found under a car was part of their daughter’s clothing, would be available in January (last month) but that period has passed and nothing is being said.

Sheema Mangar

“He [Greene] tell me January and now that time has passed and nobody can’t give we no answer,” Thakoor added.

When contacted Crime Chief Seelall Persaud said the samples are still at an overseas lab and the police are still awaiting the results.

Asked what might be the reason for the delay, Persaud said it is not cost effective to do the samples one, two or three at a time. It is better to do them in bulk. He said he believes this was one of the reasons for the delay.

“We can’t twist the arm of the lab…,” he said before adding that he could not say when the results would be ready.

Thakoor opined that because she and her family were poor, they would never get justice for her daughter’s death. Despite the setbacks, she said she is hoping that whenever the results are received “it can do something to help this case”.

The woman said that they need closure. “We need to know. Why did she die? I need justice,” she added.

According to Thakoor, if it’s a case that the Guyana Police Force “can’t get the wuk done, then get help from overseas. They should invest money in private detectives.”

She said if the local police had cared about the death of her child and were interested in solving the case, then they would have ensured they had the results by now. “They would have done something and anything to get it,” she added.

The family she said is suffering more and more emotionally. Day-to-day living, she said, is getting harder.

Mangar, 20, was robbed of her mobile phone some time after 6 pm on September 11 as she waited for transportation on North Road close to Camp Street shortly after leaving Demerara Bank where she worked. The young woman chased the perpetrator who jumped into a car and ran her down when she tried to stop him from fleeing. She was then dragged from the intersection at Camp Street and North Road to Camp and Church streets. She died hours later at the St Joseph Mercy Hospital from a ruptured spleen, one of the many injuries she sustained.

Several days later the police held a suspect and detained his car but he was later released.

Police investigators recovered fabric under the vehicle that might have come from the clothing Mangar was wearing on the night she was killed.

The fabric was reportedly sent to a lab in Barbados.