By Kristen Macklingham
“We never had that thought that he [the suspect] would do something like this, we trusted him.” Those were the sentiments shared by the mother of 14-year-old Christopher Basdeo, who was murdered and buried in a shallow grave by a relative. Standing in her Parfaite Harmonie Housing Scheme yard as they prepared for the wake, Debbie Basdeo said that her youngest child left home at about 16:30h on October 17 to visit a friend. Not realising that it was the last time she would see her child alive, she said she casually said goodbye when he said, “mommy I coming back” as he left the home. The next time Debbie saw her son was on Friday when his lifeless body was dug out of a shallow grave at a construction site on the West Bank of Demerara (WBD) on Friday. She said that her son left to go visit a friend, who lives abroad and is vacationing in Guyana. She said that he later left to visit his sister and left her house with a relative but was never seen alive again. “Friday we were coming over the [Demerara] Harbour Bridge and the Region Three Police Commander called to say that they found a body and when we went by the back at the Koker area.
It is a foundation of a house sand filled, they dug up the spot and there was my son buried there. He [the relative] confessed to the police that he lash my son to his head with a wood and he left him there to bleed and he went back to his home. When he got to his home he take a sheet from his sister and he went back around 8 o’clock and he wrapped him in the sheet and buried him down in the sand,” the woman said as she steadied herself. The grieving woman told Guyana Times on Saturday that she firmly believes that her son might have still been alive after he was struck and had the suspect sought help, he could have been alive today. Fighting back tears as she spoke, Debbie said that the location where her son’s body was found was in close proximity to a farm that he would frequent. She said that after the teen disappeared, they searched the same area with no idea that his lifeless body was hidden in close vicinity. “He normally goes to the pine farm and he picks pine right there and we went there the day before his body was found. We walked through and were searching all over we were searching for my son not knowing my son buried right there. We walked right through that place to go and I didn’t know my son was right by the second post. It is real hurtful to know, he should not have killed my child…my 14-year-old didn’t do anything to deserve this,” the grieving woman related. According to her, it was the suspect’s brother who had contacted her and her husband to notify them that he was behaving in a suspicious manner. It was after receiving this information that the teen’s family reported to the police, who immediately went in search of the rice farmer and took him into custody for questioning. “His [the suspect’s brother] called to say he looked suspicious and that he has poison. The police asked him what he was doing with it and he said if the police questioned him then he would drink it.” The family was also told that the man was seen with mud on his skin on the night of her son’s disappearance. It was on Friday, after intense grilling by investigators, that the rice farmer admitted that he and Basdeo were consuming alcohol in their village when an argument over money ensued. He told the police that he and the teen ended up in a physical altercation. He admitted that he picked up a piece of wood and used it to deal a blow to Basdeo’s head. In his confession statement, the rice farmer stated that the impact from the hit resulted in the teenager falling to the ground. He said he left him on the ground and returned to his home. However, the man said that later on that night, he returned to the location, picked up Basdeo’s body, and dug a 7ft 2” shallow grave where he buried the body. In the company of several policemen, the rice farmer returned to the crime scene and, after digging the spot which the man claimed he had buried the boy, the decomposed body of Basdeo was found. His skull also appeared to have been fractured. Basdeo’s family was subsequently contacted and the body was positively identified by his father,
