Buxton mass murder - gunman kills mother, children, four others
By Robert Bazil
A BLAZING family row erupted in gun fire and flames just before midnight Tuesday, leaving the killer and seven others dead in the rubble at Buxton, East Coast Demerara. No one can be sure what triggered Raul Herod, 36, into the mayhem but he ordered his wife Denise out of the house, telling her to "go and enjoy your life" before he started his ritual of death in the two-flat family home. Police and witnesses said he then shot six of them in the house, including his two children and his mother, poured gasolene around the bottom flat, blasted a 20-pound gas cylinder which exploded, and apparently shot himself as the flames began sweeping through the wooden building. In the end, the death count was eight, including Herod, an operations supervisor at the Securicor (Guyana) Inc. security firm. Seven charred bodies, among them Herod's, were removed from the rubble of the house by 07:30 hrs yesterday. An eighth body was found in the yard. Dead are the killer's grandmother, Angela Herod, 97; his mother, Shirley Cole, 56; aunt, Patricia Harris, 58; niece, Jonnelle Herod, 10; nephew, Orwin Herod, 15; son, Rondell Herod, 11; and daughter Nandy Herod, 14. The grandmother is believed to have perished in the fire after she was trapped upstairs, but reports said she was not shot. He recalled that his mother (Herod's first wife) committed suicide by drinking poison several years ago. Orwin, who was shot in the region of the heart, managed to flee the house into the yard but he succumbed from the wound. Police said they recovered the .32 Taurus pistol Herod used in the death spree, and two empty magazines. The gun was owned by Securicor and Herod was authorised to keep it in his possession 24 hours a day, official sources told the Chronicle yesterday. He was apparently planning the killing days before because one neighbour overheard him on Tuesday saying that "a few more days from now and this would be over". Herod also threatened neighbours during the Tuesday night attack, firing two bullets behind one of them, Dion Braithwaite. Police said in a press release that investigations so far revealed that the incident resulted from an alleged family dispute. According to the release, Herod went home at about 20:00 hrs Tuesday armed with the Taurus pistol. The Chronicle understands that Herod's mother did not get on well with his wife Denise, who was being questioned by Police yesterday. When he got home, he and his mother started a blazing row which did not ease and Herod told Denise to leave the house and not to get involved in the quarrel, the Chronicle was told. Denise left but when she returned later, the row was still on and Herod again ordered her to leave the place. She did and when she was some distance away from the yard, the shooting began. Securicor said in a statement yesterday that Herod, a supernumerary constable, was employed with the company in 1994 as a security officer and rose through the ranks based on his consistent and exemplary performance. Securicor said it was deeply saddened by the tragic loss and was cooperating with the Police in their investigations. The firm expressed heartfelt sympathy to all members of the Herod family and the community of Buxton. Police said two other persons who lived in the house were not at home at the time of the incident. A neighbour, Onica McAlmont, told the Chronicle that on Monday night, Herod's sister was in the yard cooking food on a `coal pot' for a wake when he turned off an electric light outside, resulting in an argument between the two. His mother told him that as his sister was outside he had no right to take off the light and he got angry, causing another argument. That night he pushed a door so hard that a lamp fell to the floor, breaking the shade. The villager said that on Tuesday night, there was a power blackout in the area and Herod's mother began quarrelling, complaining that the lamp could not be lit because of the broken shade. At around midnight, Herod heard his mother talking about the broken shade. Subsequently, he and his wife started to curse the mother, residents recalled. McAlmont said Herod shouted to neighbours: "People! People! You all come out...you all come out...come and talk to this lady, nuh...come and talk to this lady nuh!...she forcing me to do things wha I ein't want." But the woman said none of the neighbours went out of their houses, adding that Herod had told his wife to pack both their clothes and they went downstairs. The two were talking under the house when Herod left and ran upstairs and she ran behind him and held him, but he pushed her away. "He ran into bedroom and fire five bullets at his mother...he didn't shoot his grandmother...his mother get shoot," she recalled. McAlmont told the Chronicle that when Herod came out of the bedroom he saw his nephew Orwin in the kitchen and he shot him twice. Orwin went into the room and came out and walked to the step and started to cry, but collapsed and later died. "The husband now shoot he auntie and then walk and come down the step. His daughter Nandy was leaning over Orwin who had fallen". "...He seh, `Nandy!' and she seh, `Yes daddy', and he fired three bullets, one to her and one each of his two sons," she said. McAlmont said that she and other neighbours left the scene and ran over the road and Herod came out and said: "You'll running? wha you'll s.... running for? I gon catch you'll." She recalled that while she and others were in their hiding places they got word that the house was on fire. McAlmont said Herod had told his wife to go away "Go and have a nice time" and fired two shots behind Dion Braithwaite, a neighbour. Another neighbour, Handel Neptune said: "I know him for a number of years. We actually went to school together and I don't know him to be a person like this." Stating that he learnt that Herod had family relationship problems, Neptune said that Tuesday he overheard him talking to his daughter saying: "A few more days from now and this would be over." "I didn't know that it was an intention like that he had...but if I had known that it would have been something like this, I would have informed others, or the family," he said. Another neighbour, Luren Nelson, said she Tuesday night heard him saying "Put on the light, put on the light" and the mother replying and they argued and argued. The woman explained that Herod then came out on to the street and said: "Neighbours, neighbours, come out and talk to meh mother or you'll gon sorry". But nobody went out, so he told his wife to go and enjoy life and then he started shooting, she recalled. Nelson said a villager saw Orwin lying on the step and thinking he may still be alive, went and moved him, but when he picked him up, he was dead. The man put the boy in a corner of the yard under a genip tree. Braithwaithe said that about midnight he heard Herod and his mother quarrelling and he was threatening to kill everybody, but he did not take it serious. "I was standing looking over at him and he was pissed off or something," he said. The man reported that Herod told his wife to pack up her clothes and leave, and he went upstairs, kicked open the door and pulled a gun from his waist and fired five shots into the bedroom. "After a nephew said `Uncle Raul', he turned around and shoot Orwin and he fell down...then I said to other people, `Let us go and see if we could help him; his gun does not have any more bullets'...but by the time I said that, he walked to his apartment and fired two shots...and I jumped over the fence and ran away," Braithwaithe said. He said that by the time he went back he saw the house was on fire and heard that everybody inside was dead, except one boy. Prime Minister Sam Hinds and Home Affairs Minister, Mr. Ronald Gajraj, yesterday visited the scene and expressed sympathy with the bereaved relatives of the victims. Following discussions between Mr. Hinds and the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security, an initial relief package, comprising biscuits, butter, sugar, drinking cups, coffee and milk, has been donated to the family by Minister Gajraj.
WHAT would trigger a seemingly healthy man, who holds a responsible position in his field of work, to shoot and kill his mother, children and other close family members and bring his own life to an end? Psychiatrist at the Woodlands Hospital in Georgetown, Dr. Bhiro Harry, believes there is no one reason for such action. It could have been stress, he says. Or, a person who does something like that could have been under the influence of some substance or was perhaps mentally retarded. When stress is too much and the individual cannot control it, the stress can manifest itself in such action, Harry said in an interview yesterday. He said the person may be one with a low frustration threshold. In this instance, whether this man was under stress would depend heavily on his situation at home. Perhaps he may have had a dysfunctional family, Harry said. He added that in some settings, people quarrel and fight every day and a person may not be able to handle that sort of situation.
MORE than four years have passed since Hubert Headley, known as `Baby Arthur', butchered his mother and five others one bloody and memorable afternoon in Buxton. It was December 10, 1994. And the carnage began at Company Road where Headley met his first victim, 27-year-old Raynett Hodge, who barely managed to escape into a friend's yard after Headley took a swipe at her. He left Hodge with a sliced right jaw and shoulder. Hodge, one of three persons injured but not killed by Headley, said she was sitting on the Company Road bridge with middle-aged Bunny Joseph when Headley went to a sugar cane and coconut vendor and took the seller's cutlass and chopped her. Armed with the cutlass, he walked up to Joseph and chopped him. He then saw the mentally retarded Shawn Sullivan and ran behind him. Sullivan fell down and Headley chopped him too. Headley then jumped on a bicycle he found on the Company Road bridge and set off for Friendship where he saw middle aged Maude Hatton who was going to buy kerosene. Her neck was chopped by the berserk killer who left her to bleed under a coconut tree. One girl who was going to fetch water was spared when Headley rode past her as he headed for his mother's house. Headley's mother, Hyacinth, reportedly knelt before her son, begging to be spared. Instead, he repeatedly chopped away at her, adding the woman to his growing list of victims. Moving along, Headley found four children playing in a yard. He chopped a two-year-old on the neck and killed him. Three others were spared when the child pushed a door shut in his attempt to escape. Nine-year-old Candace Watson was witness to this scene. Seven-year-old Melissa France, however, was not as lucky as Candace. Melissa, an only child, had been sent to buy matches when Headley caught her, twisted her neck and chopped it off. On his way out of the village, Headley realised that Hatton was still alive and stopped to finish her off. A dog nearby was also killed by Headley. Headley was shot repeatedly by Police before he died around 5:45 p.m. Nobody knew what triggered Headley's madness but village folks said he was a drug addict. They berated the Police for not taking action earlier. They said that Headley had chopped off a boy's hand the previous year.
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