…relatives of Lindo Creek victims said police did not inform them of killings

SEVERAL of the relatives of the miners who were killed in the Lindo Creek massacre said that the police had kept them in the dark and that they only knew of the killings through the media.

It was while reading a local newspaper in the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) at the bedside of her sick aunt that Natalie McDonald learnt that her nephew Horace Drakes was murdered along with seven other miners at Lindo Creek.
McDonald was among five family members of Horace Drakes and Compton Speirs, who took the stand on Tuesday before Commissioner, Justice (Retired) Donald Trotman as the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the June 2008 massacre continues at the Department of Public Service.

Drakes had lived with McDonald and her family at Boerasirie Housing Scheme before his death. She had last seen the father of five in May, 2008 before he went to Lindo Creek in the Upper Demerara/Upper Berbice District to work with Leonard Arokium, a miner.
McDonald told the Commission that it was on her way to the hospital in the vicinity of the Stabroek Market in June, 2008 that her attention was drawn to a newspaper vendor. “I heard a newspaper man saying ‘get the news, get the news, Lindo Creek massacre, eight men die,” she recalled.

The woman said she was compelled to buy the newspaper and it while visiting her aunt in the hospital along with a sister that she decided to read the front-page story. According to her, at the end of the story, a man identified only as ‘Drakes’ was listed among those murdered. She quickly drew it to the attention of her sister.

Suspecting that it was her nephew who was among those killed, McDonald said she, along with her other sister went to visit Drakes’ mother Lena Waldron at her East La Penitence home. McDonald and Waldron are sisters. The two sisters queried whether Waldron had heard anything concerning her son and was told no. It was then that they showed her the newspaper.

According to McDonald, contact was made with a relative, who is also a miner, and it was he who confirmed that Drakes had been murdered. A memorial service was held in his honour on June 26, 2008.

Lena Waldron said her son was 42 years old when he died. Like her sister, she had last seen her son in May, 2008 before he went into the interior locations to work. According to her, though her family was not contacted by the police during the initial stages, at some point she visited the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Headquarters with her youngest son, Keon Waldron for him to give DNA samples to Jamaican investigators. Strands of hair were taken and his mouth was swabbed.

Waldron said though her husband was stationed at the Tactical Services Unit (TSU), the police made little or no contact with the family on the matter, and did not furnish them with any information. According to her, shortly after they had received the news, the Force sent her husband home and told him to “comfort his wife”.

Drakes’ daughter, Deon Drakes, also took the stand. Though her testimony was brief, she recalled that her father provided for his family. She too had last seen him in May 2008.
Meanwhile, eight-year-old Carmen Gittins said her brother, Compton Speirs, left in May, 2008 for Lindo Creek to work with Leonard Arokium. She was the mother figure for her siblings after their mother died in 2001. In June, 2008, Gittens said she received a phone call from her niece Rhonda Hutson, who related to her that Speirs was murdered.
Though she claimed that the police did not make contact with her or any other family member, the elderly woman disclosed that her brother’s son Erwin Drakes had provided investigators from Jamaica with DNA samples.

Erwin’s mother, Marlyn Hinds-Sullivan, who subsequently took the stand, confirmed this, adding that her son was only nine when his father died.
All the family members who took the stand so far have alleged that they were never informed of the murder of their loved ones by the Guyana Police Force and had been left in the dark when the decision was made for the remains to be buried some four years after.

The CoI is investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing of Cecil Arokium, Dax Arokium, Horace Drakes, Bonny Harry, Lancelot Lee, Compton Speirs, Nigel Torres and Clifton Berry Wong on or around June 21, 2008 at Lindo Creek in the Upper Demerara/Upper Berbice Region.