Minister of Home Affairs Robeson Benn has said that by March next year reviews will be done of a number of police “cold cases” that were slated to be reopened years ago.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event last Saturday, Benn said he had a discussion with members of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) already in relation to the cases.
“[Reviews] will be done before the end of the first quarter of next year…Arising out of that, we will know how we will go forward with them,” Benn said.
According to Benn, there are several new approaches which were adopted by the police to carry out investigative work which will be used in carrying out the reviews.
In July, 2016, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum had announced that the Guyana Police Force’s Major Crimes Unit was reopening several cold cases.
The decision, he had said, was taken following calls made by members of the public, and particularly by relatives of the deceased.
Among these cases were the murders of Monica Reece, Sheema Mangar and Trevor Rose.
The death of the then 19-year-old Reece has been seen in some quarters as one of the major events in the rise of local crime in the 1990s. Her body had been dumped from a speeding pickup vehicle in the vicinity of the Geddes Grant building (now Courts) on Main Street, Georgetown on April 9, 1993. The police had picked up a suspect and questioned him and also detained a vehicle he sometimes drove, but shortly after, the lack of evidence caused him to be released and the vehicle was returned.
Blanhum had said of the cases, Mangar’s murder will be placed on the front-burner.
In September of 2010, Mangar, an employee of a city bank, was waiting to catch a minibus to head home when her phone was snatched from her. The young woman pursued the thief, who jumped into a car and ran her down when she tried to stop him from fleeing.
The car dragged Mangar from the Bedford Methodist Church at Camp Street and North Road to the intersection of Camp and Church streets and she died while receiving medical attention at St Joseph Mercy Hospital the following day.
Rose was killed on the morning of January 26, 2014, after a lone gunman, in a heavily-tinted vehicle, opened fire on the car in which he was travelling at Eccles, East Bank Demerara, hitting him five times.
Also injured in the shooting were Rose’s driver, Troy Nieuenkirk, and Rose’s companion, Latoya Towler.
