Another cop shot dead in Guyana
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Gunmen killed an off-duty police officer outside the capital yesterday, while two other people were killed over the weekend in the latest round of violence in Guyana, police said.
Detective Constable Ronald Able, in his 20s, was gunned down while walking with his girlfriend in Friendship Village, nine miles (15 kilometers) east of Georgetown, police spokesman David Ramnarine said.
“Abel was trying to run away from his attackers when he was shot and killed by a group of five men, one of whom pointed him out as a policeman,” Ramnarine said.
Abel was the sixth law enforcement killed this year and recently submitted his resignation. He had two weeks left on the job, police said.
It wasn’t immediately clear why he resigned, but a few officers have reportedly left the force recently for fear of being killed.
There have been 21 law enforcement officers killed since last year compared to only seven in the previous two decades.
Guyana has seen a drastic increase in crime and violence since last February, when five inmates broke out of Georgetown Prison.
Police suspect at least some of them had rallied supporters to go on violent crime sprees, targeting police officers and business leaders and carrying out dozens of armed robberies and carjackings.
Meanwhile, a group of men shot and killed a bar owner and stabbed a patron to death in southern Georgetown during an apparent robbery on Sunday, police said.
There have been 40 killings this year, including police officers and suspects authorities have shot to death.
In 2002, there were more than 150 killings, four times as high as the previous year in this north-coast South American country.