Constable 18721 Feroze Bashir, of Melanie Damishana, also on the East Coast, was shot several times by a gunman while visiting the young woman in Buxton.

Police said the 21-year-old rank, attached to the Tactical Services Unit, was shot in the neck and other parts of his body by a man who approached him as he was sitting on his motorcycle speaking with the young woman.

The man reportedly asked Bashir for money and upon being told by the cop that he had none, drew a firearm and shot him several times, then fled.

Police said a relative of the female acquaintance who arrived on the scene shortly after the shooting, rushed the wounded cop to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.

He was the 10th law enforcement officer killed in the crime wave that began with the February 23 escape from the Georgetown Prison of five dangerous criminals. One of the five, Andrew Douglas, was shot dead and his body found in an abandoned car on the East Bank Demerara on Monday morning.

Bashir's adopted grandparents, Mohamed Haniff Rahman and Mariam Rahman, still visibly shaken as they spoke with the Chronicle yesterday, said they had adopted him since he was age 9 and had come to like him like their own.

"Now meh son gone...Ow son how you gon left me?" Mariam wept.

She said that Bashir left home at around 18:00 hrs Monday, but she was not sure where he had gone.

She said that around 18:30 hrs she received a telephone call from one of his female friends saying that he had been shot and was taken to the hospital.

A young woman at Rahman's home yesterday, who had a 20-month-old baby girl she said was Bashir's daughter, said that she too received a telephone call from the female friend he was visiting in Buxton where he was shot, informing her of the tragedy.

The baby's mother, Collette Frank, recalled that on Monday Bashir picked her up and took her to Georgetown where the two (father and daughter) had a treat. But little did he know it was a farewell treat.

The two women yesterday recalled that of late, Bashir had received many threats to his life. They said that following the deaths of a civilian in Buxton and another at Nabaclis, also on the East Coast, persons had sent a list of names indicating Policemen who would be killed.

They said that Bashir's name was on the list.

Mariam said that deeply fearful for the young man's life, she and her husband beseeched him to leave the job and go abroad - maybe join her four children in Brazil, but he never heeded their advice.

"Everybody talking to him. Whole month his grandfather was talking to him," Mariam said, but to no avail.

She recalled he would say to her whenever she raised the matter: "I not going nowhere. If ah got to die, ah gon die in the line o' duty."

The last death threat was apparently received by him earlier this week, following the killing in Buxton on Saturday of the Deputy Head of the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit, Vibert Inniss.

The message was: "The dougla police in Melanie next."

Mariam recalled that after she realised that he had made up his mind to stay and die in service of his country, she often urged him to turn his life over to Christ who could "steer him through" the dangers to which his life was exposed.

This he did for a while, but soon slipped into complacency again.

"He liked dress; he like parties and plenty girls...but he never used to fight. He was a good boy," she sobbed.