Six teens held in taxi driver murder probe
POLICE have held six teenagers in the probe into the brutal stabbing murder of a taxi driver at Beterverwagting, East Coast Demerara Sunday night.

A senior police official yesterday said the six were arrested after cops stumbled on a car hijacking and robbery Monday night and held a young man who led them to five others implicated in the taxi driver killing.

Police said the murdered driver was identified as Terry Smith, 35, of Goed Fortuin Squatting Area, West Coast Demerara.

He was stabbed nine times and robbed of his car at Beterverwagting Sunday night, police said.

Residents on Quamina Road, Beterverwagting, said they heard him screaming for help at about 21:00 hrs.

He died shortly after and four men were seen running from the scene to a waiting dark coloured car which they boarded and subsequently drove away, police said.

A party of policemen on routine duty at about 19:45 hrs Monday, while on the Ogle airstrip road, saw a group of men acting suspiciously, investigated, arrested one of them and rescued a taxi driver who was being robbed, police said.

A police press release said two cars with registration numbers PGG 1327 and HA 7772 were parked close to each other on the road.

The patrol, in passing, asked the men in motor car HA 7772 if they were okay and were told they were all right, police reported.

However, as they were leaving, they heard a shout of “thief” from the car and stopped to investigate.

The men in the two cars fled but the ranks fired a round and one man was arrested, police said.

The 41-year-old driver of car HA 7772, of Montrose, East Coast Demerara, told the police that he was hired by three men at Cummings Lodge to make a pickup at Ogle.

A fourth man joined the car at Ogle and during the journey he was attacked by the four men who beat him and held him down in his car, he said.

A second car came up and the driver of that vehicle also started to beat him.

They stopped the assault as the police vehicle approached and later fled, he said.

Police said the car which was stolen from Terry Smith, licence number PGG 9723, was recovered and they have seized both vehicles.

The six held are all in their teens, the police official told the Chronicle.

October , 2004