Passenger killed after gunman opens fire on bus
Attacker fled into Buxton
Stabroek News
October 18, 2002

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A man was shot dead on Wednesday night while sitting in a minibus in Buxton after two passengers jumped out and one of them opened fire.

The dead man is Alfred Crandon and not Aubrey Rogers, as misidentified on the front page of yesterday’s Kaieteur News, causing one of his daughters to become hysterical. Rogers is very much alive and residing abroad, the man’s father, William Rogers said yesterday.

The Police, in a release said Crandon, 49, was fatally shot at around 8:30 p.m. by one of two gunmen after the bus they were all in, was ordered to stop at Church of God Road, Buxton.

According to a report, the gunmen disembarked the vehicle after requesting it to stop.

They then went to the rear of the vehicle just as it was about to drive off. One of the gunmen pulled out a weapon and shot several rounds at the back of the minibus, fatally wounding Crandon who was a passenger in the rear seat of the bus.

The man received gunshots to the head, neck and shoulder, before the gunmen fled into Buxton. Another passenger in the bus was wounded on the left shoulder. He was treated at a city hospital and sent away. Four 9 mm spent shells were found at the scene.

When Stabroek News visited William Rogers yesterday he pointed out that his son has been out of the country for some time.

He said the Police mistook Crandon for his son because the dead man had a number of documents in his possession bearing the name of Aubrey Rogers.

The man said when the police called, he explained that the body was that of Crandon, who was taking care of his son’s home at Nootenzuil on the East Coast.

The older Rogers said because of the erroneous report, one of his granddaughters, after reading the KN article yesterday, became hysterical, thinking that her father was indeed dead.

Several media houses have expressed concern about the ready access that the police force is allowing KN to access evidence at crime scenes and other information to the exclusion of other media houses. This complaint has been raised with several senior functionaries in the police force to no avail.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that Crandon had been returning home from the city, when he was fatally shot. Rogers said the man’s wife was very ill in the hospital. At the time of his death, Crandon was carrying some of his wife’s clothes that he had collected from the hospital.

This newspaper found the grieving Desiree Crandon at home yesterday, awaiting word from her only son, who is a student of the University of Guyana. The shaken woman explained that it was while she was in her hospital bed yesterday morning that she read about her husband’s brutal murder. (He had been correctly identified by the newspaper later on in the article.)

“Yesterday afternoon he left me at the hospital... [Then] I read it in the papers this morning and asked for my own discharge,” she said weakly, as tears flowed down her cheeks.

She said Crandon always insisted on walking with all his important documents, despite pleas from her not to do so. Those documents included bills from the Guyana Power and Light Company in Rogers’s name.

The Crandons were married for 20 years and the man was self-employed.