GEORGETOWN, Guyana — A second Trinidadian victim has been identified in the recent killings in Guyana involving armed bandits and the police.

And with the identification of the body of 30 year-old Sheldon Olivierre, known as Anthony Garraway and also Ismail Abdullah, the Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago police are now probing more closely a possible link between criminal elements in both countries.

Olivierre, alias ‘Abdullah’, was shot and killed along with Guyanese Patrick Cumberbatch last Friday at a police checkpoint on the east coast of Georgetown. The police claimed that they came under fire from the car in which the two men were driving and they returned fire, fatally wounding them.

A quantity of guns and ammunition and bullet-proof vests were among articles found in the car, the owner of which is still being investigated.

On November 23 last year another Trinidadian, Seon Spaulding, was murdered, in what the police said was an “execution-style killing” by armed gangsters at Buxton, a village of a number of killings and criminal violence over the past 10 months.

His body was found riddled with bullets. He was at the time dressed in American-style camouflage clothing and a bullet-proof vest.

The Trinidad and Tobago police said that Spaulding had no criminal record in that country. But in the case of Olivierre, they said he was wanted to “assist in certain investigations”.

Olivierre and Cumberbatch were the latest of some 71 persons killed since the upsurge of murder and criminal violence in Guyana that started in February when five armed and dangerous prisoners shot their way to freedom.

Three of the fugitives from justice have since been killed and some 19 lawmen are among the murder victims between March 2002 and Monday, January 13.