One week after Gerald Anthony Sobers, 25, succumbed to injuries he sustained in a shooting and days after the Guyana Police Force issued a wanted bulletin for the alleged shooter, a 22-year-old Friendship man was charged and remanded for the murder.
Osaffo Chester, a Security Officer of Friendship, East Coast Demerara, was arrested on Thursday last by a rank from the Cove and John Police Station and charged on Monday for the offence of murder.
The accused appeared at Cove and John Magistrate’s Court before Magistrate Fabayo Azore, where the charge was read to him. He was not required to plea and was remanded to prison.
The matter was adjourned to September 26, 2023.
Sobers succumbed to his injuries a month after he was allegedly shot over an old grievance with a colleague at a Dazzle Housing Scheme, ECD, supermarket.
Sobers, 25, a security guard of Paradise, ECD sustained a gunshot wound to his neck during the July 3, 2023 incident.
His sister, Joy Sobers, told the News Room in a telephone interview that the wound damaged the man’s spinal cord, causing him to lose mobility from his chest down. It is believed that the incident stemmed from an encounter Sobers and the suspect had about three weeks before the shooting, during which the suspect had allegedly attempted to shoot him with his service weapon.
Since the incident, Sobers was hospitalised in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital in a critical state. He succumbed while receiving medical attention on Saturday, July 29.
A Police investigation is said to be ongoing. According to Joy, she learnt that her brother was visiting his brother-in-law at his West Coast of Demerara (WCD) home when he reportedly received a call from a supervisor, who owed him some money.
The supervisor, Joy said, reportedly asked Sobers to come to ECD. Shortly after, Joy said a cousin who had been with Sobers just moments before, recalled hearing an explosion which sound like a squib. It was, in fact, the sound of Sobers being shot.
