Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 06, 2015 News
Nigel Torres was only 17 when his life was brutally snuffed out at a mining camp in the Berbice River.
His charred remains, and those of his seven colleagues were discovered at Lindo creek on June 21, seven years ago.
For his mother Guanette Torres it has been seven long years.
“I want them to know what they took away from me.
He was my baby, he was so loving, if he was alive today, I would not have to be working so hard. He would’ve been taking care of me.”
Torres disclosed during an emotional telephone interview, that she will forever regret her decision, ‘’to bring Nigel back from down the river’’ where he was staying with his sister.
“I wanted him to come back home, because the area where he was, was not too nice- there was a lot of marijuana and so on, and I did not want him to get involved in that, but is best I de leave he right there.”
Torres said that shortly after returning home, her son decided to join the Arokium crew that had been mining at Lindo Creek. As a mother, she noted that she did not mind, as she knew most of the men, since they often visited her home.
“I felt that my son was safe because he was with people we knew.”
Her world was shattered after receiving the dreadful news the day the bodies were found.
She is however not convinced that it was the Rondel Rawlins (Fineman) gang that had carried out the gruesome massacre.
Torres said that a bloody mallet that was found in the trail leading to the Arokium camp belonged to her. She had loaned it to the men. “I sometimes wonder, if the blood on it belonged to my son- if whoever kill he- kill he with me own mallet and then bun he body.
The still distraught mother said that she has spoken to persons that spoke to an alleged eyewitness to the gruesome crime.
She however admits that she does not know the eyewitness.
But Torres believes that the real motive for the massacre was robbery, as information had somehow leaked out that the men had shortly before “washed down” and so had in their possession a quantity of gold and diamonds.
She compares the tragedy to the fate suffered by one Dwieve Ramdass, who was murdered in August 2009 somewhere along the Essequibo River by Coast Guards, who subsequently dumped his body.
Ramdass had in his possession a huge sum of cash, some of which was recovered at the home of one of the suspects.
The three ex-Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard ranks were in July 2013 all found guilty of the murder and sentenced to death.
Guantette Torres now believes that it is time that those responsible for her son’s murder and also that of his colleagues, be brought to justice.
“I want to see a full commission of enquiry set up to get to the bottom of this thing.
“For too long this issue sweep under the carpet, nobody cares- nobody bothers, but only he that feels it knows it; and I feel this thing to me heart, I want the previous administration to provide answers. I want them to see the face of my son- how young he was- how full of life.
When they take his life, they take a piece of mine!
Jackie Arokium, who lost her son Dax and her brother in law, Cedric, in that mayhem which to date is still being considered as one of the major mysteries of the crime wave, is also demanding that there be a commission of enquiry.
The remains of the eight murdered miners were packed in three coffins, and were interred in three marked graves in the Le Repentir Cemetery following a brief ceremony attended only by the parents of Nigel Torres.
Only three names, Nigel Torres, Bunny Harry and Clifton Wong were marked on the coffins provided and relatives had questioned why the other miners were not so considered.
The other miners murdered were Dax Arokium and his uncle Cedric, Compton Speirs, Horace Drakes and Lancelot Lee. The burial took place in September 2012, four years after the tragedy.
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