DNA tests results from Lindo Creek still awaited
MINISTER of Home Affairs, Mr. Clement Rohee, told a news conference, last week,  that the authorities are still awaiting, from Jamaica, the DNA results of tests to identify the eight miners killed in the Lindo Creek massacre of June 21, 2008.
He noted that it is more than two years since the samples were sent there for testing and it is not that there has not been any follow-up but the Jamaicans have a lot of requests for laboratory tests to be done.
Rohee added that he is not sure whether the Guyana request was sent late, so to speak.
“Late in relation to the fact we have not heard anything yet. So it is not that we have not been pushing the matter. We, recently, took the decision to make a shift in the laboratory facilities location to the United States because the time waiting is a little too painstaking,” he said.
Since the killings at the Lindo Creek, Upper Berbice River mining camp, Police have been waiting for the DNA tests results from Jamaica.
Specialists from that sister CARICOM State had undertaken to do a series of tests on the remains of the eight victims and six of them, who came here on July 18, 2009, visited the crime scene, from where a number of samples were taken.
Although no charges were ever laid against anyone for the murders, members of the Rondell ‘Fine Man’ Rawlins gang were blamed.
The discovery of the burnt bodies was made early on the morning of June 21, 2008, by the camp owner, Dean Arokium, who found the corpses wrapped in tarpaulin.
The deceased are believed to be Arokium’s son, Dax, 29; his brother, Cedric called ‘Brother’, 51; Clifton Wong known as ‘Berry’, 46; Lancelot Lee nicknamed ‘Piggy’, 42; Compton Spires called ‘Tona’, 58; Horace Drakes or ‘Pona’, 40; Bonny Harry, 48 and Nigel Torres, 17.
On September 1, 2009, the Ministry of Home Affairs disclosed that the competent Jamaican authority, which conducted the DNA analyses on the bones retrieved at Lindo Creek, concluded that they belonged to at least six individuals.
However, only three full profiles were obtained, the Ministry said in a statement, which informed that two were associated with reference samples submitted by possible parents.
But the references were inadequate to establish any relationship.
Subsequently, the Jamaicans requested DNA samples of Lancelot Lee, Horace Drakes, Cedric Arokium and Nigel Torres.
Meanwhile, Dean Arokium implicated members of the Joint Services in the massacre but the latter have strongly denied involvement.
The Police reported that ballistics tests on the spent shells collected from the scene established that they matched one of the weapons that was recovered, by the security forces, from Cecil Ramcharran called ‘Uncle Willie’ and Robin Chung nicknamed ‘Chung Boy’, who were slain at Goat Farm during a confrontation with lawmen.
Police had said they encountered Rawlins and his gang in a confrontation at Christmas Falls, also along the Berbice River, on June 6, 2008, when one of them was killed and six others managed to escape.