A 37-year-old phone card vendor was on Tuesday evening shot dead by a bandit in front of his home in what seems to be a robbery.
Dead is Ron Mansfield of Lot 772 Westminster, West Bank Demerara (WBD). Reports are Mansfield had just returned home on his motorcycle, when he was approached by a young man. A single gunshot was heard, and the perpetrator then fled the scene with a bag, which contained the man’s earnings for the day, phone cards and other documents.
When Guyana Times visited the scene on Wednesday, his wife explained that her husband returned home at about 20:30h after he would have finished selling his phone cards. She said she heard the sound of the motorcycle after which their two
Dead: Ron Mansfield
children – ages 13 and 15 – opened the door for their father.
“I was in my bedroom, I heard the motorcycle came in and the children went to open the door for him. He was going to get some water, so they went to give the bottle to him,” she recalled.
However, the woman related that as her husband went to his motorcycle, which was parked in front of the yard, he was confronted by a lone gunman.
“I don’t know when he went out back if the person run him but he ended up till over at the neighbour’s entrance. So it’s either someone run him or they had a scuffle but whatever happened, it resulted in a gunshot…,” she explained.
After hearing the gunshot, she explained that the children started to scream and on rushing outside, she saw her husband lying on the ground bleeding from his chest.
The perpetrator was in the process of making his escape with the bag.
“The sound of the gunshot is what alerted me to go outside and of course, the screams of the children. I run outside and when I ran, I saw that this person was running away. What I can say is that it is a slim person, young male, not an old person but I can’t give a detailed description because it was pretty dark,” she recollected.
Mansfield was picked up and rushed to the West Demerara Regional Hospital but succumbed to his injuries while on the way.
It was related that the now dead man has been in that type of business for about
The dead man’s motorcycle
five years. However, in the nine years that the family has resided in that area, the family explained that there are frequent incidences of crime and other criminal activities.
“There is a lot of heightened robberies and crime within the area. It just never came to my doorstep until last night.”
The man leaves to mourn his wife, two children and other relatives.
No arrests have been made.
