Moments before he left Kwakwani to go into Lindo Creek on the morning of June 5, 2008 Dax Arokium had called a friend asking him to credit his cell phone account so that he could make contact with the driver of the tractor who was taking him into the backdam.
This would mean that Dax had the phone with him around the time he was killed and the use of it in the days after the camp massacre in which eight people died would point tellingly at suspects.
The man’s friend who this newspaper made contact with said Dax called him just after 2 am and told him he was waiting for the tractor but needed $200 in credit and could not find a place to purchase a phone card. The man said he was at his friend’s house at the time when he received the call and was able to purchase the card, put the credit into his phone and then make the transfer to Dax’s phone. He said at about 2:30 the transaction was completed and he received a message from the service provider that it was successful. He said that was the last he heard from Dax. He said he knew that Dax usually left Kwakwani very early in the mornings to go into the backdam.
A female friend of the deceased had alerted Dax’s family that the phone he had with him when he died at Lindo creek was in use when she received a message on July 4, four weeks after the burnt remains of Dax and seven other miners were found at Lindo Creek by his father, Leonard Arokium.
It is believed that the text was sent by Dax but he lost signal before it was transmitted.
When the phone was activated in a signal area again after the massacre, the text, which would have been pending was automatically transmitted to the young woman’s phone.
The woman had told this newspaper that she was in downtown Georgetown when she received the message and initially she did not know who it was from as Dax had two phones, one of which was very new and she was not familiar with the number. She said she immediately dialled the number but while someone pressed the answer button no one answered and she only heard noise in the background before the phone went off. She said she redialled the number but the phone was apparently turned off.
The young woman said it was about a week or two later as she was going through her phone records that she came across the text again and suspected that it may have come from Dax’s phone. She said she immediately called the young man’s brother, who confirmed that the number was for a phone Dax had had in his possession.
She said she then dialled the number again and this time someone answered and said: “Soldier man ent deh and he lef he phone home,” and hung up. However, this time someone called her back immediately after and asked her who she was trying to get in contact with. She said she informed the person that she had received a text from the number and she wanted to know who had sent it.
According to the young woman, someone then told her it was a soldier’s phone and that he was not around. Soon after, she said, another voice was heard on the phone, which sounded like a child’s, and she was told that he had found the phone in an alleyway in Christianburg, Linden. Even before the child had finished speaking, she added, a woman took the phone and attempted to explain where her “nephew” had found the phone.
She said she explained that the phone belonged to someone she knew and the woman then asked her if she wanted the phone. She said the woman told her that when her nephew found the phone it was “battered” and two of the buttons were missing, but he decided to remove the SIM card and use it.
The woman later said that her nephew had told her that he threw away the phone and he was not sure where. That was the last time the young woman made contact with anyone on the phone, but by this time Dax’s relatives, including his father, had been alerted.
The man’s relatives are convinced the phone was on his person at the time of his death as he had called a friend from Kwakwani on June 5 or 6, just before he went into the backdam.
Meanwhile, his father Leonard Arokium has produced the ‘Flexpack’ he received from the Digicel outlet at Parbhu’s General Store in Parika, which gives the customer all the information about the phone.
Arokium showed Stabroek News a document, which indicated that the phone with the number 592-674-9643 was purchased on May 15.
The phone evoked interest after Arokium’s lawyer revealed that calls had been mysteriously made on it in August this year.
The police have since said that based on information they had received from the telephone company the cellular phone which Arokium said his son Dax had on his person was registered to a female.
However, Arokium said, because his passport had expired he had asked one of the salesgirls in the store to use her identification card to purchase the phone. He said that was the reason the phone was registered in the name of a female.
The police subsequently said they had arrested three persons who might have knowledge “of a cell phone with a SIM card of a similar number” and they were being questioned. There has been no further information from the police on this probe. Those three persons have since been released.
Arokium has also since given a statement to the police and showed them the ‘Flexpack’. The police have not stated why they have been unable to move further in this investigation considering that possession of the phone is a damning clue about the perpetrators.
Clifton Wong, Nigel Torres, Cecil Arokium, Compton Speirs, Bonny Harry, Horace Drakes, Dax Arokium, and Lancelot Lee were slaughtered at the Lindo Creek mine and their remains burnt sometime after June 6. Leonard Arokium discovered their burnt remains on June 21.
