A policeman was fatally shot early yesterday morning while conducting a search of a man in an East Coast police station.
Dead is Constable 17650, Eloye Nathaniel Adridge, 33, of 47 Hughes Street, Golden Grove, ECD.
According to a press release from the Police Public Relations Office, the father of three in the presence of colleagues at the Sparendaam Police Station, was shot in the abdomen while attempting to disarm a man who had pulled a pistol from the region of his crotch. At the time the man and another were being searched by the police.
Two men had been taken into custody, said the statement, while the vehicle, a firearm and a .38 pistol with seven live rounds of ammunition in a magazine, a spent shell and an additional fifteen live rounds had been retrieved and had been lodged at the station.
The constable had been rushed to the Georgetown hospital where he had undergone an emergency operation, but he had died at about 5:45 am in the intensive care unit.
The release said that Constable Adridge and other ranks were on duty at a road-block mounted on the northern carriageway of the Sparendaam Public Road, opposite the police station when they had stopped vehicle HA 8868 with five occupants including the driver.
The driver along with the man who had subsequently fired the shot had been taken into the station's enquiries office where ranks had proceeded to perform a body search on them, during which search one of them had pulled out a pistol.
Constable Adridge had been attempting to disarm the man when he was shot in the abdomen.
The man who fired the shot was said to have been subdued by the other ranks there.
When Stabroek News visited the Golden Grove home of the deceased, neigbours had gathered to console the grieving mother while colleagues were busy making preparations for a wake.
An emotional Winifred Adridge stated that she had been informed at about 2:00 am yesterday morning that an accident had occurred involving her eldest child.
She immediately made preparations and boarded a Georgetown-bound minibus in the company of her brother.
On arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital she was told that Eloye had been taken to the operating theatre, and she proceeded to wait.
It was not until around 5:45 am while walking around the hospital that she had been informed by a doctor that her son had died as a result of his injuries.
According to the deceased's mother, it was the second son she had lost within a year; the last one died when a mining pit in which he was working in the interior caved in last June.
Adridge who had been a member of the Guyana Police Force for the last five years, lived with his mother at Golden Grove, and was the father of two boys and a girl aged 12, 9, and seven.
During his stint in the force he had been stationed at various locations including Leonora, West Coast Demerara, Cove and John and Beterverwagting, before being transferred to Plaisanc
His wife is said to have pre-deceased him some five years ago.
He was described by his mother as a supportive person who was jovial and fun loving.
Adridge was the eldest of six children, four males and two females.
Courtesy of the Stabroeknews
June 10, 2001