Six years after three Albouystown youths were fatally shot by police on South Road, in George-town, their families still await justice.
Mark Anthony Joseph, called ‘Two Grand,’ 19, Romario Gouveia, 19, and Jermaine Canterbury, 21, were killed on October 12th, 2013 in the vicinity of K&VC Hotel, where police had said they were allegedly going to commit an armed robbery.
An inquest was ordered to determine possible criminal liability for their deaths but it was hamstrung due to a lack of evidence.
Months after the shooting, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had recommended that an inquest be held.
An inquest is a formal court hearing at which a coroner must establish who died, how, when and where. An inquest must be held if death was violent or traumatic, or if the cause of an unexpected death has not been explained by illness or disease.
Over the years there have been few inquests into unexplained deaths. The usual procedure is that it is held before a magistrate in the presence of a jury.
June-Ann Joseph, the mother of Mark Anthony, still looks forward to justice.
“I miss him, we all miss him. Sometimes I does feel sad but I know I have to release him and let him go. Only today I watching he picture,” June-Ann told Sunday Stabroek yesterday.
She said that she believes that one day she will receive justice. “…I know there is a god of justice and one day I will get justice,” she noted.
The grieving woman believes that Mark Anthony and Canterbury, his cousin, were “at the wrong place at the wrong time”.
Meanwhile, Donald Gouveia, the father of Romario Gouveia, was not as optimistic as he said that he lost all hope with the inquest and does not think he will ever get any justice.
“…I get fed up…I done know is waste a time to fight the police… I don’t follow it up, waste ah time to follow it up… I glad fah something come out of it but wah yuh gone do? If I had the money something woulda come out of it since my son die,” he said.
Donald stated that the killing of his son was intentional. “It’s more than execution….they took them there to kill them,” he added.
There were conflicting accounts of the shooting when it occurred.
The police had said that the trio were shot as they were about to commit a robbery. However, the relatives of the men had denied the allegation from inception, while contending that they were unlawfully killed by the police and were not engaged in any wrongdoing as had been claimed
The police, in a press release, had said that moments before they were shot, the three young men had exited a car near the K&VC hotel, where ranks had received information that an occupant of the hotel was the target, and they had been staking out the building. They said they challenged the three men as they were making their way to hotel and the men opened fire, forcing them to return fire.
Two guns and a wig were recovered following the shooting, according to police, who said they were unable to locate the vehicle the men used to travel to the location because it was fitted with fake licence plates.
Witnesses, however, had said that the men were put to lie on the roadway in front of the hotel and then shot.
Persons close to the Georgetown Hospital had also recalled hearing at least two gunshots moments before the police arrived at the hospital gate with the wounded men. Romario Gouveia himself had told reporters shortly after arriving at the hospital that he was the last to be shot. He said that he was farther up the road when the police approached him and ordered him back to the vicinity of the hotel. When he arrived near the hotel, Gouveia said, Canterbury and Joseph were lying face down on the road bleeding. He assumed that they were dead. It was at this point, he said, that he was told to lie down, and then he was shot as well. The bullet entered behind his right ear and exited through his right cheek. He died suddenly in hospital two days later, leaving shocked relatives alleging that he had been killed because he was the lone survivor and main eyewitness to what had taken place.
The other two men died on the night of the shooting.
