A search team returned to Tortola empty-handed after combing several stretches of its northern shoreline for missing Guyanese, Roger Fraser aka ‘Scary’ on Sunday.
Fraser, 41, went missing one week ago on December 8, after leaving his Long Trench home for a fishing expedition in the Cooper Bay area with close friend and fellow Guyanese, Kendeye Thomas.
The two often told persons they were brothers because of their closeness and shared fishing as a favourite pastime.
According to reports from the island, both men were swept out to the sea by strong waves
while fishing near rocks in the Cooper Bay area. Thomas’s body was discovered the following day, December 9 in the Larmer’s Bay area after it washed ashore.
Reports said he was planning a trip to Guyana within the coming days to meet relatives after being away for nearly a year.
An eight-member team comprising several friends of Fraser and his wife, Rehani Bacchus, searched along the treacherous pathway where the two missing men were last seen on that fateful day.
Searches were also done in the Cane Garden Bay and Brewers Bay areas without success.
Bacchus told reporters that she and Fraser had been together for nearly two decades.
The mother of three said Fraser left home hurriedly after speaking with a friend on the phone whom she presumed to be Thomas. He had been playing a game of Solitaire, which he loved and asked Bacchus to pack up the cards as he left. Those were the final words she heard from her husband before he disappeared, she told reporters.
She described her husband as a friendly, jovial and loving person and although she acknowledged that the passage of time may make his safe return all the more difficult, she wants answers both for herself and his mother who is currently in the Virgin Islands on vacation.
The missing man’s wife has not given up hope and continues to press forward in a very brave manner, especially for the three children who are currently at home in Guyana and anxious for news of his safe return.
Meanwhile, Head of the Virgin Islands Search and Rescue (VISAR) Philip Aspinall related that his team last conducted searches on Friday for the missing man and will now focus their efforts along the shores.
“We’re working with the police on that,” Aspinall told reporters. He said the team was scheduled to go out again yesterday.
Searches were conducted in both eastern and western directions of where the two men were last seen, “We’re expecting if anything that if he is going to come ashore, that he will come ashore in that very same area,” Aspinall stated.
The group has gone as far west as Brewers Bay. He described the ocean’s condition as “nasty” and said they have been rough and unpleasant all week and too rough to put divers into.
