Georgetown – Guyanese police were hunting Wednesday for at least a dozen gunmen who they say killed six people, five of them workers at a printing press of the Kaieteur News newspaper.
Police Commissioner Henry Greene described the Tuesday night killings as a “horrible experience” for the South American country scheduled to hold general elections in less than three weeks.
Minutes after Julian DeGrace, a security guard at the Kaieteur News printing press compound, raised an alarm that gunmen were in the area, they barged in and wounded him in the neck. They then ordered the six printing press workers to come out of hiding, Greene said.
DeGrace was hospitalized.
“Five of them obeyed the orders and I am told that one of the bandits said, ‘Write them off,’ and they shot them on the ground. Most of them were shot at the back of their heads,” Greene told reporters at the crime-scene located just southeast of this capital.
Prior to the rampage at the printing press, several members of the gang, in separate incidents, killed a man in the Bagotstown district and wounded three other people.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, during a brief visit to the Kaieteur News printing press, said the attacks appeared to be linked to unrest at the Georgetown Prison.
He also said the violence appears designed to intimidate people in the run-up to elections.
