Two prisoners, Imran Ramsaywack and Rayon Jones, who had escaped from the Mazaruni Prison in Region Seven on February 16, 2021, were shot dead by police at Better Hope South backlands, East Coast Demerara, on Monday night.
A woman, who was an alleged accomplice, was also shot dead by the police; she is yet to be identified. Their bodies are at the Lyken Funeral Home.
Police Headquarters in a statement noted that its ranks received information at around 20:40hrs that the escapees were hiding out in an abandoned swampy field surrounded by bush.
The ranks observed that there were three wooden shacks on the field with two partly constructed ones. It is alleged that the ranks began clearing the first shack but no one was seen, however, they heard “a voice” in the third shack.
It is claimed that the police immediately identified themselves when a “male emerged” and discharged one round at them and ran away. The ranks returned fire and in the end, Jones, Ramsaywack and the woman were found inside the shack with gunshot injuries.
The male, who allegedly fired at the police, escaped. A sawn-off double-barrel shotgun was found at the scene.
Jones and Ramsaywack were among four prisoners who escaped the Mazaruni prison last month by cutting off the bars from within their cell and breaking the padlock to the entrance gate.
Jones’ father, Ralph Jones, was remanded to prison last month after he admitted to aiding the prisoners after the escape.
As a matter of fact, Jones, who was serving 28 years imprisonment for manslaughter, had attempted to escape from the Georgetown Prisons in 2020; he was among two of the masterminds behind the attempted prison break.
Jones, who was a resident of Bartica, was sentenced in July 2018, for the murder Puranand ‘Andrew’ Baljit, whom he confessed to killing during a home invasion on June 9, 2016, at his Timehri, East Bank Demerara home.
Meanwhile, Ramsaywack, also known as ‘Kevin Jones’, ‘Coolie Boy’ or ‘Ramsa’ was sentenced to death in December 2019, for the murder of 45-year-old United States-based Guyanese businesswoman Samantha Benjamin, whose dismembered body was found at the Buxton Seawalls, East Coast Demerara in 2015.
He was a notorious gang member of Lot 7, Adelphi Village East Canje, Berbice.
