Police checking on phone calls to victim’s home – as probe continues into cash-crop farmer’s murder
THE police on Wednesday received a list of several phone calls made to the home of cash-crop farmer Pamela Kendall on the night she was murdered at No. 45 Village, Corentyne.They requested the list after one of the woman’s relatives said that someone had phoned the house after she was shot, asking them not to implicate the caller in the killing.
The police are of the view that the call might have been placed to throw them off track.
Meanwhile, the relative who took the call on Tuesday told the police that she recognised the voice of the caller as that of the woman’s husband, Deoram Sookchand, which is what prompted the man’s arrest.
However, usually reliable sources in Berbice have said that at the time the call was made to the woman’s home, her reputed husband was in the presence of several reporters.
The source, however, said that it is unclear if that was the only call which was placed to the dead woman’s home.
When the police received the list of numbers that had called the home, it did not include names and addresses. The police have since requested from the phone company the names and addresses of the persons in whose name the numbers are registered, so they may determine who needs to be questioned.
Additionally, the police from Georgetown yesterday morning revisited the home where the woman was shot and carried out additional investigations.
Sookchand is in police custody in Georgetown where he is being questioned by ranks of the Major Crime Investigation Unit.
He was brought to Georgetown on Wednesday following a decision to conduct a more in-depth probe into his statement to the police in Berbice.
Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum told the Guyana Chronicle yesterday that they have not yet received the results of the tests carried out on the man to see if he had traces of gunpowder residue on his person. A decision was taken to “swab” him after his account of where and how his reputed wife was shot contradicted the results of an autopsy conducted on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Sookchand has lashed out at the police for being unable to capture his wife’s killer.
By Leroy Smith