By Lakhram Bhagirat
Law enforcement officers face a great deal of danger every day in the execution of their duties. They are quite often the first in the line of fire and put their lives in danger to protect ours from criminal elements. In the execution of their duties, some of those officers lose their lives and leave behind families.
In many cases, those fallen officers are the sole breadwinners and when they lose their lives, their families feel the brunt of the hardships. That is exactly the case of Sharon Roberts, who is still trying to pick up the pieces some 16 years after losing her beloved.
Police Constable 14500 Rayon Roberts was gunned down on Thursday, January 2, 2003 in what can only be described as an act of cowardice. The father of six was one of the many targets for bandits who wreaked havoc on the nation during the 2002-2009 crime wave. It was during that period that the Guyana Police Force lost a number of its officers who were the target of these bandits.
When he lost his life, Roberts was one of four Policemen who resided in Bent Street, Wortmanville.
It was sometime about 22:30h on January 2, 2003 and Roberts was at a shop a short distance away from his home when three men walked up to him and opened fire. According to media reports from back then, three of the bullets were said to have lodged in his head: one which entered from the lower temple and lodged in the forehead; one that entered through the back of his head which also lodged in the forehead, and a third that entered through the forehead.
The Police had recovered five .32 spent shells from the scene.
Roberts’s widow, Sharon, is still battling to piece together her life after losing him. She goes about every day wondering where the next meal is going to come from and how she will survive. Her husband had been a member of the Guyana Police Force for some 13 years before he was brutally murdered.
Remembering that fateful day, Sharon said that their fifth child, Randy, was celebrating his second birthday and her husband had gone to the shop to buy groceries when he was executed.
“He come home to buy ice cream and he went across to the shop. He went to buy the cream, cigarettes and a Guinness, and I see this three men pass me on the bridge and I ain’t really tek it fuh nothing really, so they passed me back on our bridge here and all I hear was gunshot start firing,” she related.
Sensing that her husband may have been in danger, Sharon, who had given birth some two months before, sprinted to the shop. When she got there, the sight was one that she vividly remembers to this day. There was her blood-soaked beloved, crouched up and lifeless. She screamed like the proverbial “mad woman”. She screamed and screamed while holding his lifeless body. She was drenched in his blood as well and then a second later, her entire world went black.
Soon her husband’s colleagues came and pried her away from him; they took him to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where his death was confirmed. Sharon remembers walking in a daze and being taken to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) at the Brickdam Police Station where she was shown an album of possible suspects.
Shivers went down her spine as she skipped through the album because she knew exactly who murdered her husband. She was able to get a good look at them and later identified them as notorious criminals Christopher Belle, Romel Reman, and Roger Bunbury.
“I could not walk free (after I identified them), because I would have to look over my shoulder. I was inside most of the time and could not work. My husband never let me work and now he was gone, and I had six children and no help at all. We were building a house on Railway Embankment at Liliendaal and I could not even go there.”
Today, she is facing the possibility of being rendered homeless, because her relatives already issued her with a notice asking her to “find somewhere else”.
After her husband died, Sharon had to take up employment and was initially offered a job with the Guyana Police Force and after a few months of taking up the job, she realised that her children were being neglected. So she chose to quit and started doing odd jobs around to provide for her family. She then ventured into making snacks to sell, but after a while the revenue did not equate with the expenses and she eventually turned to the security service sector. Now she is working as a security guard for Radar Security Supplies and Service to send her last child to school.
“It is hard, really hard; it’s hard, man. I sit many days and I just cry, because I know if Rayon was here then life would be so much better for me and these children. Three done married and got their families, but I still have three and one is in school. He is the baby and he got to write exam next year. Hopefully, I can afford to pay his fees. My children does miss their father and Randy, although he is 18, does still cry every time it is his birthday, because he does miss his father,” Sharon said amid tears.
It is some 16 years now since Rayon has been dead, but for Sharon it feels like just yesterday, because every day is a struggle. A struggle to survive, a struggle to provide for her family, and a struggle to keep her sanity. She goes days without sleep and meals, because the bills need to be paid, children need to be fed and there is never enough for them all.
She is, now more than ever, on the edge because of her impeding homelessness. Now at 50 years old, she finds it extremely hard to try to start over, because she could never move on. She still smells her beloved’s blood, feels it drenching her, and sits with his pictures and cry.
