GDF intelligence officer wasn’t instructed to chase subjects- sources

Last Updated on Monday, 4 January 2016, 14:42 by Denis Chabrol

The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) intelligence officer, who was killed in a road accident last week Wednesday, was staking out the wrong people at the wrong house and at no time was he instructed to engage in a high-speed chase, according to well-placed sources.

Sources said he was never instructed to chase the persons but rather to report on their whereabouts to agents of the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) of the Guyana Police Force.

Pyle and his wife, Stacy, were killed in a collision with a truck on Carifesta Avenue , Georgetown on Wednesday, December 30, 2015 while chasing a car with a number of persons who had escaped Pyle’s road-block with his vehicle.

SOCU investigators had intended to put under surveillance the residence of the Head of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington but instead, Sergeant Robert Pyle was asked to focus on a house occupied by Charles Ramson Jr. immediately west of Brassington’s home.

Earlier in the day, SOCU investigators seized piles of documents from NICIL’s headquarters on Barrack Street, Kingston and changed the locks to his office doors.  Financial sleuths also searched the home of NICIL’s Company Secretary, Marcia Nadir-Sharma.

Sources said Pyle was asked to monitor the premises and report to police immediately whether he had seen the movement of any documents or other material from Brassington’s residence and arrange for back-up to aid in the seizure.

“He was not told to chase any vehicle but apparently in his enthusiasm, that is what he did and that (the accident) is what happened,” the source told Demerara Waves Online News.

On seeing a number of persons emerge from the building, he did so and while apparently became over enthusiastic by attempting to block and subsequently chasing the vehicle that the occupants had entered.

Other sources told Demerara Waves Online News that SOCU’s request to a GDF contact was rather informal and at no time was it made directly to Pyle, highly regarded as a competent and efficient army intelligence agent.