Days after the death of Martial Arts Expert and Beharry Security Personnel, Garfield Newton, who was shot dead over his jewellery and his gun stolen, the mother of the dead man is crying out of justice.
The whole situation, she said, has wrenched her heart and her soul out.
Forty-year-old Newton was walking back to his car after picking up some pieces of jewellery from the goldsmith when he was shot dead by three men and robbed of the jewellery and his firearm in Albouystown last Friday.
According to the goldsmith, Newton had just collected the jewellery from him when his son later told him of Newton being shot to his chest moments after leaving the premises.
Newton was rushed to the nearby hospital, with a gunshot wound to his chest and pronounced dead on arrival.
Describing it as the worst Christmas for everyone in the family and those who also loved him, Newton’s mother, Leona Walton Barton, said that she could not come to grips with what has transpired and it has “wrenched my heart and my soul out”.
“They wrench my heart and my soul out. I don’t know when or how if I would ever pass this but I’m just hoping and praying that they find whoever did this to my son and bring them to books. Let them know they did a grave injustice to this world, for the young people of Guyana especially in the martial arts fraternity and to my family; his mother his father and all to who love him,” Ms Barton said.
Ms Barton said that Newton was her fourth child, but the eldest remained in Guyana to take care of her since she was troubled by health issues.
She explained that Newton would also look for ways to encourage youths to better their lives by either helping or giving advice. He would always try to lift the family up with laugher even in the bad times.
With such a good personal character, Ms Barton said that she could not see how someone would want to take a life that remained so valuable to many.
“Life in itself for everybody going to be just plain and simple, you know, as Garfield was our livewire. Garfield was a livewire to people in Guyana, people in Trinidad. So many people called me and cried. They call him Son, they call him father, they call him big brother because of what he did and how he did it.”
Ms Barton said also, that he will be missed in the martial arts fraternity since that is where many lives were turned around.
“A lot of young men and young women who were bent on the indiscipline side of life in Guyana, Garfield took them in the Blackhawks martial arts academy and gave of his best to them. Lots of them told me, they said, ‘Mom, that’s our father, that’s the father most of us haven’t had or know; how he treated us.”
The Mother, while in tears, noted that she remains positive that the criminals will be caught since the life of her son will not go in vain.
Since the incident, three persons were arrested including the goldsmith’s son and other relatives.
The police investigators have issued a wanted bulletin for an 18-year-old, Kevin Carter.
