-signs point to murder
The body found at the back of the Cheddi Jagan Inter-national Airport, Timehri, on Tuesday has been identified as that of a missing Campbellville man, who, according to relatives, was brutally murdered.
Forty-year-old Kelvin Hinds, a father of four, left his 181 Campbellville Housing Scheme home last Wednesday morning around 10 am and was not seen again. Reports are that the man’s body was found in a crouching position. There were reports too that he had sustained a single gunshot wound to his head, but relatives could not confirm this. However, they said while the body was somewhat decomposed, it was obvious that he was battered as his face was disfigured.
His reputed wife, Shonette Howell, who is the mother of two of his four children, told Stabroek News yesterday that Hinds left their home to visit a friend who lives a short distance from them in the same area. She said the friend had told her that he gave the man $5,000 and he left with the promise that he would have returned shortly.
The woman said after Hinds did not return home she tried calling him but his phone was off. On Friday, she reported him missing at the Prashad Nagar Police Station and was told that the station would have alerted other stations. “But they didn’t do it because when I went to Brickdam Police Station dem ent had no report about he being missing,” the woman said.
Howell, who is in the early stages of her third pregnancy, said she and the man’s relatives called around and looked for him but no one had heard from or seen him since Wednesday.
Yesterday morning, she said, one of his brothers called her and informed her that a body had been found at Timehri and she should visit Le Repentir morgue to view it.
“But I tell he I don’ t think I able and that he should go and see it. But when he went they tell he that he had to get a police from Eve Leary before he see the body so I went and get de police and went to the mortuary,” the woman said. She said she then decided to view the body and even though it was badly decomposed and his face had been bashed in, she recognised Hinds by the clothing he was wearing: a gray vest and three-quarter pants. Howell said she also recognised her reputed husband by his teeth. “I know is he and the only thing missing is his brown slippers and cream cap that he left with.”
“He was murdered but I don’t know who do it or for what,” she said.
When asked if her husband ever had any brushes with the law, Howell said that he was once incarcerated on an accusation of robbery but that matter was thrown out of court.
She said since the incarceration the police have been constantly harassing the family and would sometimes claim they are looking for guns but they never found anything incriminating.
Howell had approached Stabroek News once to complain about police harassment as according to her police officers were in the habit of placing guns in her young children’s faces.
Meanwhile, Stabroek News has been reliably informed that Hinds spent several years in the Mazaruni Prison for a gun-related offence. Howell said even though the body was decomposed it would be kept on ice for another few days as Hinds’s mother is overseas and is expected for his funeral.
