THE BODY of a security guard was fished out of the Mazaruni River Tuesday after he went missing Sunday night, subsequent to leaving his post at a mining camp.Dead is Leslie Blair, 24, of Berbice. His body was recovered after being sighted in the Mazaruni River under a “dragger.”

Police said Blair was responsible for security at a mining camp. He, however left the camp site on Sunday night to visit a shop with three others.

Reports reveal that the small boat which Blair was in slammed into a tree or stump and its four occupants ended up over board. Those in the boat told the police that they heard Blair breathing loudly and swimming towards a log, they didn’t see him after that and his body did not surface.

The four men used a small boat from Blair’s camp when the accident occurred at 21:00hrs Sunday night. None of them were working when they collision happened.

According to a miner in the district, the security guard was in charge of overlooking a camp and the dredge box to make sure that no one tampers or does anything illegal at the site. Normally, the security also look over workers at the site to ensure that no one leaves and visit any illegal shops in the area.

The miner said that although many of the security guards claim that they don’t leave their post to visit these shops, they actually do, leaving the camp vulnerable. They would normally claim that they would go hunting, which is also illegal, but they use this excuses anyway to visit the illegal shops.

“We have been calling on the GGMC for years to shut down the illegal shops which cause problems for all the miners in the interior,” the miner told this publication.

Meanwhile, a friend of the dead man told this publication that Blair usually works in the interior and he was employed from January 2016 with a miner to secure a camp and would usually leave every three months to return home where he would spend a month before he resumed work again in the interior.

“He was supposed to actually go home Monday, the night before he died, he had planned to come out of the interior and return in a months’ time,” the friend said.

Divisional Commander; ‘F’ Division- Senior Superintendent, Ravindradat Budhram confirmed that the body was recovered. He said that a postmortem will be done on Thursday.