Willabus pulled trigger on family
-Atlanta police confirm
Stabroek News
January 30, 2003
Autopsies yesterday revealed that former Guyanese journalist Ian Willabus was the one who pulled the trigger to kill his wife and three young sons sometime over the weekend.
The 33-year-old Willabus, his second wife, Dianne, 32, and his three sons from a previous marriage - Padraic, 10, Damani, 5 and Deion, 3 - were all found in an Atlanta, Georgia apartment in the US shortly after noon on Tuesday.
Willabus had worked at the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), the Guyana Television Network (GTV) as an anchor and at the now defunct Guyana Airways Corporation as a flight attendant. He was employed as a freelance writer for CNN International at the time of his death.
One report coming out of Atlanta yesterday quoted DeKalb police Lt. Pam Kunz as saying, "On Wednesday, autopsies showed that Ian Willabus carried out the shootings".
Earlier reports stated that one of Willabus' co-workers went to check on him after he failed to report for work. Willabus did not show up for work Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and the police said the victims might have been dead for several days.
CNN spokesman Nigel Pritchard had said the Willabus had contributed to the network frequently on a broad array of subjects.
According to reports, the police had not received any recent calls reporting gunshots in the area. However, the law enforcers were called to Willabus' apartment in December because of "a verbal altercation," Kunz said. At that time, an officer handled the incident with mediation. The following is an account from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report:
Chris Williams, a staff writer at CNN International, said he went to the apartment Tuesday to check on his friend and co-worker because Willabus had not been heard from for several days.
Relatives of the three boys' mother, who lives in Guyana ... said they were devastated to hear of the deaths. Natalie Hardy of Queens, New York, said the boys' mother - her youngest sister, Michelle - had been told of the shootings.
"She's not good. She's not good at all," Hardy said in a telephone interview.
Hardy said the boys had visited the United States off and on. They spent about five weeks with her beginning in December.
"I have pictures of them laughing and playing in the snow - it was the first time they had seen snow," said Hardy, choking back tears Tuesday evening.
Hardy said she heard about the deaths through a phone call from a relative in Trinidad. For the next few hours, she called newsrooms, police precincts, distant friends - anyone who could tell her more. When told police were treating the deaths as a murder-suicide, Hardy burst out crying.
The boys' uncle, Keith Pierre of Orlando, said his sister and Willabus had separated before the youngest child was born. Willabus had filed for visas so the boys could live in the United States with him, said Pierre, who planned to drive to Atlanta on Tuesday night.
Pierre described the boys as loving, energetic, well-behaved, smart and excited about school. He last saw them when he spent two weeks with his family in Georgetown, Guyana, in September, he said.
"I've got photographs of them all over my house. . . . I just put them in frames," Pierre said. "They were just enjoying life. They were looking forward to coming to America and having a better life."
Hardy said the last time she talked to Willabus was Tuesday of last week, when she called to wish her 5-year-old nephew a happy birthday.
"It was a little after 9 and Ian said they were asleep," Hardy said. "I said the boys normally don't sleep so early, but he said they had a full day."
Willabus was a doting father who had recently moved to metro Atlanta from New York, according to Williams, his friend and co-worker.
Williams described his friend as an outgoing, athletic person. He said he last saw him at work on Thursday and everything seemed to be going well.
"He was very gregarious and actually a lot of fun," Williams said.
Willabus and his second wife had just settled into the Kenridge Apartments. Residents in the gated complex just inside I-285 said it is a quiet neighbourhood, where children gather in the parking lot to play games on Saturdays, one family said.
Rodney Walker, 25, of Jonesboro said he lived in the same building as the Willabus family until he moved in November. He returned to the complex Tuesday night after hearing of the killings.
"It's a shock and very sad," Walker said. "I never heard them argue or anything, and they always kept their window open. They seemed like pretty nice people to me."
