Two more young men are dead. Cordel August, 22, and Eon Headley, 35, were gunned down in cold blood at Vigilance South on Wednesday night. Just past 10 PM, two men on a motorcycle dressed in black opened fire on a gathering at a local shop, then vanished into the dark.
Police say no arrests have been made. But for the families grieving at the Enmore Regional Hospital, and for a nation watching its reputation crumble, that answer is unacceptable.
These recent shootings bear all the hallmarks of extrajudicial executions—targeted, brazen, and merciless. With every passing day without an arrest, the message to the underworld is clear: you can kill with impunity.
The urgency for the Guyana Police Force to find these perpetrators cannot be overstated. We are not living in a rural backwater; we are the hub of a burgeoning oil economy. Yet, a simple review of our infrastructure reveals a glaring contradiction. There are so many CCTV cameras lining both the East Coast and East Bank corridors—more than the police can seemingly monitor. If the killers traveled by motorcycle, their faces, their license plates, and their escape route should be captured on multiple lenses.
This crime has moved beyond a public safety issue; it is now an economic threat. Investors, especially those eyeing our construction boom, do not look at our skyline; they look at our crime stats. They do not like murder-for-hire situations. They do not trust a system where assassins ride freely. And they certainly will not bring their families to live in a country where a casual gathering at a shop can turn into a death sentence.
“We are very concerned,” said a prominent foreign businessman who asked not to be named. “If foreign investors cannot guarantee the safety of their employees and their own executives and their children, they will take their capital elsewhere. The oil boom will stall, not because of world prices, but because we failed to secure the streets.”
The bodies of August and Headley now lie at Memorial Gardens, waiting for post-mortem examinations that will tell us *how* they died, but the real question remains *why*.
Will the Commissioner of Police prioritize the investigation of this case? If they’re smart, they’re will. The cameras are there. The evidence must be there. The killers are roaming free. One local lawyer who asked not to be named state that, “we need to find these murders before this situation escalates out of control”
