RENAISSANCE YEAR — President calls for unified, peaceful and prosperous Guyana

The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) intelligence officer, who was killed in a road accident last week Wednesday, was staking out the wrong people at the wrong house and at no time was he instructed to engage in a high-speed chase, according to well-placed sources.
Sources said he was never instructed to chase the persons but rather to report on their whereabouts to agents of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) of the Guyana Police Force.
Pyle and his wife, Stacy, were killed in a collision with a truck on Carifesta Avenue , Georgetown on Wednesday, December 30, 2015 while chasing a car with a number of persons who had escaped Pyle’s road-block with his vehicle.
SOCU investigators had intended to put under surveillance the residence of the Head of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington but instead, Sergeant Robert Pyle was asked to focus on a house occupied by Charles Ramson Jr. immediately west of Brassington’s home.
Earlier in the day, SOCU investigators seized piles of documents from NICIL’s headquarters on Barrack Street, Kingston and changed the locks to his office doors.  Financial sleuths also searched the home of NICIL’s Company Secretary, Marcia Nadir-Sharma.
Sources said Pyle was asked to monitor the premises and report to police immediately whether he had seen the movement of any documents or other material from Brassington’s residence and arrange for back-up to aid in the seizure.
“He was not told to chase any vehicle but apparently in his enthusiasm, that is what he did and that (the accident) is what happened,” the source told Demerara Waves Online News.
On seeing a number of persons emerge from the building, he did so and while apparently became over enthusiastic by attempting to block and subsequently chasing the vehicle that the occupants had entered.
Other sources told Demerara Waves Online News that SOCU’s request to a GDF contact was rather informal and at no time was it made directly to Pyle, highly regarded as a competent and efficient army intelligence agent.

Alana Seebarran, who was mistakenly pursued in a high speed car chase by an army intelligence officer during a bungled operation that resulted in three deaths, has told police that she and her brother fled during an attempt to detain her outside her home because none of the officials properly identified themselves.
In a statement that was submitted to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on Thursday and which was released to the press yesterday, Seebarran, a former beauty queen who is now the wife of PPP/C parliamentary Charles Ramson Jnr, detailed the events prior to and after the accident, which has prompted calls for a full probe.

Former Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall yesterday slammed President David Granger for his statement that there is no need for a full probe into the Carifesta Avenue accident that claimed three lives, labelling it “unlawful” interference which sets a bad precedent of the Executive crossing boundaries.
“No member of the Executive including the president has the authority to determine in what instances the police force should or should not investigate,” Nandlall told Stabroek News. “The investigation and detection of incidents or allegations in order to determine whether a criminal offence has occurred is a matter that is purely and exclusively under the Police Act,” he said.
Granger last week told reporters that he did not think the crash, a result of a botched intelligence operation that resulted in the deaths of Guyana Defence Force (GDF) intelligence officer Sergeant Robert Pyle, his wife Stacy Pyle

Efforts to re-accredit the University of Guyana Medical School (UGMS) have been given a boost by “a good corporate citizen,” who has pledged $200M to assist in the construction of a building to be used for student instruction.
This is according to Minister of Public Health Dr George Norton, who told Stabroek News yesterday that the Ministry has been approached by this citizen with the offer of funding the construction of the instructional space within the compound of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).