Taxi driver shot dead outside Paradise home
By Samantha Alleyne
Stabroek News
December 25, 2002
A 31-year-old taxi driver was gunned down late Monday night as he arrived at his Paradise, East Coast Demerara home.
Dead is Paul Nedd also called `Pabalo’ of Sixth Street, Paradise. The father of two, also a carpenter, was pronounced dead at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
From all indications the young man’s assailant(s) lay in wait for him and just as he stepped out of his car, PGG 9808, they sprayed his body with bullets. A shop in front of the yard had several bullet holes in it. Police said yesterday two unidentified gunmen committed the attack.
His wife Karen Nedd told Stabroek News that it was a few minutes after 11 pm when she heard the horn of her husband’s car in front of the home. She said that was how he normally announced his arrival whenever he worked late at night.
Nedd said that soon after that she heard two bursts of gunfire but took it for nothing as she thought her husband might have fired off some squibs.
“He is always a jovial person and I said to myself that he might have tied some squibs together and lit them off seeing that it was Christmas time. I never thought it was gunfire since he is not involved in any trouble.”
She said after a few minutes her husband had still not come into the house and the car light was still on, so she decided to step onto the veranda.
That was when she saw her husband in a “kneeling position” and his head to one side. She assumed he was peeping under the car to inspect something. “I ask he, `Paul wah happen to the car?’ three times but he did not answer and is then when I look closer I see blood running. I sey `Oh God Paul get shot’ and I ran down to the car and touch he.”
She said by then a resident in the area heard her shouts and rushed to the scene informing her that the man was not dead and that she should go for a vehicle to take him to the hospital.
She and her daughter ran all the way to the road where they saw two Guyana Defence Force (GDF) patrol vehicles and she informed them of the incident. By the time they returned to the scene more residents had gathered around and some were assisting in placing the man in his vehicle. One of the residents took the driver’s seat and they started for the hospital. But when they got onto the public road they realised that one of the tyres had been punctured by a bullet and they were forced to get another vehicle.
“He was on my lap all the time and when we reach the hospital he was still breathing but when they took him inside, some minutes after the doctor and nurse pronounced him dead,” the woman said.
The man’s younger brother Shawn had returned from a wedding in Victoria a few minutes after the shooting, but did not see anything unusual.
Nedd said her husband had travelled to Barbados and had worked as a carpenter and it was with that money he had bought his car.
The couple would have celebrated their third wedding anniversary on New Year’s Day.
The woman with tears running down her cheeks asked, “Is this what deh give me fo Christmas? This is meh Christmas gift?”
Paul has also left, 6-year-old Kadesha and 2-year-old Kristoff to mourn. The young man’s death has followed several of its kind in recent times, most of which remain unsolved. On Monday morning, a policeman was shot dead in ‘C’ Field Sophia.
