Police intelligence coupled with information from members of the public today resulted in the cornering and subsequent killing of prison escapee Clive Forde called El Sinkie.
Forde along with others escaped from a holding area while in the custody of prison authorities last week.
Today, the man was seen walking along Laing Avenue when the police were alerted.
As the police responded and attempted to approach the man, he began running while opening fire on them.
The escapee sought refuge in a yard on the Front Road Squatting area where he was cornered between a fence and a pit latrine.
From there he engaged the police in a gun battle with a small arm while the police returned fire with both large and small guns. El Sinkie was shot dead and fell to the ground in close proximity of the pit latrine.
Police took a sheet from a resident in the area and covered the man’s remains before dumping it into a police van and then they proceeded to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
There, the man was pronounced dead on arrival. His family members who were there at the hospital appeared calm as they watched the police moving back and forth in the hospital compound.
When the Lyken Funeral Parlour undertakers arrived to remove the body from the GPHC morgue, the hospital security denied the relatives access to go forward and positively identify the body.
Back at the scene where the exchange of gunfire took place, one woman said that she heard what sounded like a motorcycle backfiring but upon investigating, she saw a man running towards her premises with the police giving chase, both were firing at each other.
She said that she quickly hurried her young children into the house and told them to lay flat even as the police and the suspect ended up in the neighbour’s yard where the exchange of gunfire continued to take place.
When the dust settled, blood and spent shells were seen all over the place and the crime scene was left unattended even as the police went in search of two other persons they beleived might have been aiding the escapee.
The police also removed a 9mm pistol from the scene which the now dead escapee had in his possession. (Leroy Smith)
