Murder of Berbice boys: Police awaiting report from regional investigators

The Guyana Police Force (GPF) in a statement on Friday evening said it is awaiting the final report from regional investigators in relation to the brutal murders of 16-year-old Isaiah Henry, his cousin 18-year-old Joel Henry and 17-year-old Haresh Singh.

The Police said the members of the Regional Investigative Management Systems (RIMS), which arrived in Guyana on September 28, spent one week assisting local detectives and has since departed.

“…the RIMS team is still to complete and handover their report to the authorities in Guyana,” according to the statement from Public Relations and Press Officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police Royston Andries-Junor.

He noted that the all the investigators involved in this probe are working diligently to bring the perpetrators to justice and assured members of the public that investigations into the murders of the Henrys and Haresh Singh are continuing assiduously.

The Police also thanked the members of the RIMS team for their assistance with these ongoing investigations.

The RSS team visited Guyana following a Memorandum of Understanding between the Government and the CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (CARICOM IMPACS). President Irfaan Ali made a request for regional assistance into the murder investigations a few weeks ago.

The three boys resided at Number Three Village, West Coast Berbice (WCB).

The mutilated bodies of the teen cousins were found on September 6 with several chop wounds in Cotton Tree WCB. A Post Mortem Examination (PME) conducted on the mutilated bodies found that they both died from haemorrhage and shock due to multiple incised injuries.

In the case of 18-year-old Joel, he received 18 wounds while Isaiah received several chops to his head. Both of the boys’ spines were severed. The killers carved out a huge ‘X’ on Isaiah’s head while they cut open Joel’s chest.

Their gruesome murders sparked protests across the country which subsequently turned violent in Region Five and resulted in persons being robbed, beaten and their vehicles damaged.

The police found that the boys were not killed at the location they were found and a total of 75 ranks from the Joint Services and a pathologist, the Guyana Police Force combed the backlands of Number Two and Three Villages with the hope of finding the area where the teen cousins were killed.

The ranks came up empty-handed even with aerial support via a helicopter from the Guyana Defence Force.

Three days after the Henry boys were killed, Singh was discovered unconscious in a rice field on the way to his farm on September 9. He died while on the way to the New Amsterdam Hospital.

He was found unconscious by his 12-year-old brother while his motorcycle was found torched.

A post mortem examination found that Singh died from brain haemorrhage and blunt trauma to the head compounded by compression injuries to the neck.