Standing in her Parfaite Harmonie Housing Scheme yard as they prepared for the wake, Debbie Basdeo is still struggling to accept that her youngest child was murdered.
Christopher Basdeo, 14, was found dead some ten days after he was reported missing.
The murder suspect is a 42-year-old relative.
“We never had that thought that he would do something like this, we trusted him,” Debbie said.
Christopher had 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.
“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 believes 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.
It was on Friday, after intense grilling by investigators, that the suspect, a 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.
