“We wanted a proper burial” – miner’s niece

Lindo Creek CoI

Ronda Hudson, the niece of Compton Speirs, one of the miners who were killed in the Lindo Creek massacre, stated that her uncle did not deserve to die the way he did, and said she was even more upset that he did not get a proper burial.
She made these comments on Thursday at the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into those killings, where she observed that Police officers had visited her family’s home in Meten-Meer-Zorg, West Coast Demerara (WCD) and had brought a bag with military clothing, asking if it belonged to the slain miner. Hudson told the commission that, after all these years, her relatives are saddened that they never got any part of their loved one to bury.
“Imagine you are sleeping and somebody just shoot all around you and we didn’t even get a piece of bone of our uncle to even be satisfied that we get something that when his birthday comes (where we) can go (to emotionally connect with him). All we have (are) memories (of) the good times,” she testified.
Speirs’s niece added that her uncle had financially supported her and other relatives, as he lived with them after her grandparents and parents had passed away. Hudson told the Commissioner, Justice Donald Trotman, that when they received word of Speirs’s death, she was in total disbelief. She later recalled that some days after they had learnt of the murders, about eight Police officers came and met with relatives and brought a black garbage bag of clothes that she said did not belong to the miner.
“They open the bag and pour (the contents) out on the ground. There was a soldier pants and some T-shirts, and while two of them were talking and asked where he lived, I showed them the downstairs, and after that they left,” the woman, who was sobbing at times, explained.
She added that no member of her family was contacted about the burial arrangements for her uncle, but noted that she had accompanied two relatives who gave DNA samples to the Police.
In early March this year, it was disclosed that former Crime Chief and outgoing Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud had ordered that the remains of the eight miners killed at Lindo Creek be buried in one coffin, some four years after they were killed, despite the advice of the Lyken Funeral Home.
Dr Dawn Stewart of the Lyken Funeral Home had testified that on the day of the incident, back in June 2008, she had received a call for the pick-up of the remains. However, when she received the remains, she did not open them, as she did not want to tamper with the evidence. The remains, she had said, were at the funeral home for some four years — the longest time any corpse has been at the facility in its 95-year history.
According to Dr Stewart, the Home had advised the Police to have the remains buried; however, the Home was told not to so do, since the investigation was still ongoing.
She said that, within the first year, some family members had been making inquiries about the remains, but they were always referred to the Police.
Dr Stewart said that when the funeral home was finally given the go-ahead to bury the remains, the home were told that “one coffin would do” by then Crime Chief Seelall Persaud. However, the remains were eventually buried in three coffins at the Le Repentir Cemetery. She explained that the home took it upon itself to have a short service “for closure” with a few family members of one of the victims.