Guyana agents kill massacre suspect in raid
1:00 AM
Posted: Friday, August 29, 2008
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) -- A gang leader accused of orchestrating two village massacres that left 23 people dead in Guyana was killed in a shootout Thursday after authorities raided one of his hideouts, police said.
Rondell Rawlins, the South American country's most wanted fugitive, and two other suspected gang members were gunned down by police and soldiers who chased them from a structure near the international airport to a highway south of the capital, police commander Welton Trotz said.
Police seized several rifles and were searching for a woman suspected of harboring Rawlins. One soldier was shot in the hand, Trotz said.
Rawlins was accused of trying to destabilize Guyana through the massacres this year in the coastal village of Lusignan and the mining town of Bartica. He was also suspected of involvement in the 2006 assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh.
President Bharrat Jagdeo's administration has called Rawlins' gang domestic terrorists intent on creating mayhem in this English-speaking South American nation of 730,000.
The government offered a US$250,000 bounty for Rawlins after the village attacks, but he continued to elude capture. In June, his heavily armed gang repelled an assault by dozens of police and soldiers on a hideout in the Amazon and escaped into the jungle.
Police Chief Henry Green said he believed Rawlins' death will spell the end of the gang.
"Having killed the mover and shaker of this gang, we feel we have broken the camel's back," Green said.
Presidential adviser Gail Teixeira said "people are relieved" by Rawlins' killing.
The two other suspects shot dead by police were identified as Jermaine Charles and Shawn Grant.
Charles escaped from police custody two months ago following his arrest on murder charges. He was accused in a 2006 attack on the printing plant of the daily Kaieteur News newspaper that killed six employees.
Police said they did not have a file on Grant.
Rondell Rawlins, the South American country's most wanted fugitive, and two other suspected gang members were gunned down by police and soldiers who chased them from a structure near the international airport to a highway south of the capital, police commander Welton Trotz said.
Police seized several rifles and were searching for a woman suspected of harboring Rawlins. One soldier was shot in the hand, Trotz said.
Rawlins was accused of trying to destabilize Guyana through the massacres this year in the coastal village of Lusignan and the mining town of Bartica. He was also suspected of involvement in the 2006 assassination of Agriculture Minister Satyadeo Sawh.
President Bharrat Jagdeo's administration has called Rawlins' gang domestic terrorists intent on creating mayhem in this English-speaking South American nation of 730,000.
The government offered a US$250,000 bounty for Rawlins after the village attacks, but he continued to elude capture. In June, his heavily armed gang repelled an assault by dozens of police and soldiers on a hideout in the Amazon and escaped into the jungle.
Police Chief Henry Green said he believed Rawlins' death will spell the end of the gang.
"Having killed the mover and shaker of this gang, we feel we have broken the camel's back," Green said.
Presidential adviser Gail Teixeira said "people are relieved" by Rawlins' killing.
The two other suspects shot dead by police were identified as Jermaine Charles and Shawn Grant.
Charles escaped from police custody two months ago following his arrest on murder charges. He was accused in a 2006 attack on the printing plant of the daily Kaieteur News newspaper that killed six employees.
Police said they did not have a file on Grant.
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