Local authorities have not yet received a report from the five-member team from the CARICOM Regional Security System (RSS), which recently visited to assist the Guyana Police Force (GPF) with the investigation into the murders of teenaged cousins Isiah and Joel Henry as well as Haresh Singh on the West Coast of Berbice.
This disclosure was made in a press statement issued last evening by GPF spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Royston Andries-Junor, in response to a “social commentator”, whom he said was “attempting to spread false news”.
According to Andries-Junor, while the team departed Guyana after a one-week visit, it was still to complete and present a report to local authorities.
“Contrary to what was published by this particular social commentator, the RIMS (Regional Investigative Manage-ment Systems (RIMS) team is still to complete and handover their report to the authorities in Guyana,” the statement noted.
Stabroek News had previously reported that the team, which arrived here on September 28, departed on Tuesday. The RSS team comprised officials from countries within the RIMS.
This newspaper was previously inform-ed that although the team has departed, the investigation into the murders remains active.
Information reaching Stabroek News revealed that the investigations are still awaiting the results from DNA samples, which were sent to St. Lucia for testing.
During an interview with reporters Denis Chabrol and Nazima Raghubir last week, President Irfaan Ali had disclosed that the samples were sent overseas for forensic analysis.
Isaiah, 16, a student at the Woodley Park Secondary School, and Joel, 18, who worked at the Blairmont Estate, went missing on Saturday, September 5, after they left home for the Cotton Tree backlands to pick coconuts.
After they did not return home, relatives lodged a missing-persons report with the police and subsequently launched a search. It was while searching that the bodies of the teens were discovered. The discovery of their bodies set off days on unrest in West Berbice. Autopsies performed on the bodies of the teenagers showed that they both died from haemorrhage and shock due to multiple wounds.
Days after this, another teenager, Haresh Singh, was also murdered in what is believed to be a reprisal killing.
More than a month ago, the police had said that investigations revealed that the Henrys were not killed at the location where their bodies were found.
The police had said that the bodies of the cousins were found about 600 feet from each other in clumps of bushes near a coconut farm on the WCB. “…Preliminary findings showed that the bodies of the Henry boys were discovered at a secondary crime scene,” the police in a statement had said.
This means that the heinous murders were not committed where the bodies were found. “Person(s) moved the bodies after the murder and placed them at the locations where they were subsequently discovered,” the police added.
Forensic evidence was found at the secondary crime scene and has since been collected, preserved and submitted to the Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL) for DNA analysis.
The police had also said that DNA samples were also collected from the suspects who were in custody and sent for a comparative analysis to be conducted against the forensic evidence collected from the secondary crime scene.
