Claudette Schultz, the mother of 29-year-old Antoine Adisena Houston who was one of three men gunned down by police on Thursday morning at the junction of Mandela Avenue and Industrial Estate road, denies that her son was wanted in Trinidad for any killings and robberies or was linked to robberies on the West Coast and East Coast of Demerara, as had been reported in a section of the Guyanese press.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News has been informed that the name of the third man killed by the police, and whom they have called 'Doggie,' is John Bruce.
Schultz has also denied that her son was employed at the time of his death with the People's National Congress/Reform (PNC/R), something which senior officials of the party corroborated.
She said she was more than shocked when she read of these allegations in a newspaper yesterday.
When Stabroek News contacted Chairman of the PNC/R, Robert Corbin and its General Secretary, Oscar Clarke yesterday, they said that the young man was not employed at the party's headquarters. Clarke said he does not have Houston on the party's list of employees.
Houston was shot by members of the Target Special Squad along with Steve Grant and John Bruce called 'Brucely' of Laing Avenue.
A police release on the incident last Thursday had stated that a patrol in the Industrial Site at about 05:30 hrs Thursday saw a vehicle with its licence plates partially obscured by cardboard. The release stated that as the ranks attempted to stop the vehicle three men jumped out and fired shots at the police party which was forced to take evasive action. During the confrontation, the statement continued, the vehicle in which the men were travelling fled the scene.
The ranks found a Beretta sub-machine gun with one magazine containing 32 rounds of live ammunition, a Browning 9mm pistol with seven rounds of ammunition in the magazine and a .32 Taurus revolver with three rounds.
Eyewitnesses, in contrast, have alleged that the three men were shot in cold blood, one when he was backed up against a stall, and the other two as they were lying face down on the ground.
Speaking from her Albouys street home, Schultz, who was surrounded by her two her sisters and other relatives, said that she had woken her son on Thursday at around 5:00am to purchase fish at the Industrial Site. The woman said he told her that he was going to get a drop with another man who lived in Albouystown and who had a private car. She explained that the man's wife had a fish shop and he usually travelled to Industrial Site to purchase fish for his wife's shop.
The woman recalled that after her son did not return at around 7:00am she visited the wife of the driver of car, who told her that her husband had not returned as yet. Schultz said she became worried because her son usually lived by his word and she expected him to return after he had finished purchasing the fish. He did not really "walk about," she said.
She then recounted that the wife of the car driver had been informed that the shooting at Industrial Site had involved her husband. As a consequence, Schultz decided to visit the mortuary at the Georgetown Hospital since her son would have been in the car.
At the mortuary she was denied permission to see the bodies and she later visited the Brickdaam Police Station, but was told she could not view the body. By then it had been confirmed that her son was one of the men who had been shot by the police.
She said her son had at no time been involved in any criminal activities nor had he been wanted by the police.
She disclosed that Antoine had lived in a number of countries because of the work his father, Abosie Houston, did, and Trinidad was one of them. According to her the dead man had been a resident in Trinidad but in 1992 at age 20, he left that country and travelled to the USA to live with his father. She admitted that her son had been deported from the US in 1998. Although her son was not working at the time of his death, Schultz said he wanted for nothing, since his needs were provided for by her and other relatives in Guyana and the USA.
Relatives yesterday gave glowing reports about Houston whom they stated had been a very jovial person and had never been involved with the law. The mother said that she would not rest until she got justice because her son had been killed in cold blood. She called on the police to produce evidence that her son had ever been wanted in Trinidad for robberies and killings.
The mother of John Bruce, Megan Waithe, told Stabroek News yesterday that she did not know where her thirty-four year-old son had been going that morning. She said she had seen him in the morning, since he lived by himself at the back of her home, but he had not told her that he was going out. She claimed that her son had never been involved with the law, neither had he ever been wanted by the police, and nor did he have an alias of 'Doggie.'
Waithe too said that she had been denied access to her son's body. She had been told that her son had been shot by the police, information which had been confirmed when she saw his photograph following his death on the front page of a local newspaper.
Both mothers questioned why they had not been allowed to see their sons when it was obvious that a section of the press had had access to them to take photographs. (Back to top)
Police ask media personnel for names of eyewitnesses to Industrial Site killings
The Sunday editor of the Stabroek News and a senior television operative have come in for critism by the Guyana Police Force (GPF).
According to a release yesterday from the public relations department of the GPF, a senior police investigator accompanied by a female rank of the Criminal Investigation Department, had contacted the "female editor" at this newspaper in an effort to obtain information which would aid the GPF in identifying possible eyewitnesses to last Thursday's shooting of three men by the police. This had been done on account of "certain disclosures" which had been made in an editorial carried in yesterday's edition of the Sunday Stabroek.
The editor, continued the statement, had refused to disclose any information about the witnesses, claiming that it was "unethical and unprincipled." Instead, she had referred the officers to other media houses.
An effort to glean similar details from a prominent television operative was equally futile after that individual had claimed that he had no information, the release said. However, continued the statement, he had indicated that he would contact his reporters in an effort to obtain information in relation to the incident.
The GPF reiterated its committment to conducting a thorough investigation, but observed that mere rumours or gossip could not be used for evidential purposes. The GPF was therefore appealing to anyone with information to come forward as early as possible, so that there could be an early conclusion to the investigation.
"The reluctance on the part of those media operatives in providing information," said the statement, "brings into question the credibility of the information they possess."
In an invited comment, Sunday editor, Anna Benjamin, confirmed that three (not two) members of the GPF had visited her office yesterday, and had requested the names of eyewitnesses interviewed by this newspaper on the killings at the Industrial Site. She had, she said, declined to give them on the grounds that journalistic ethics required that sources not be revealed in such cases.