Missing miner Troy Greenidge was a witness in the Shaquille Grant murder Preliminary Inquiry (PI).
However relatives are not sure if his disappearance is connected to his testimony. The alleged shooter has been committed to stand trial in the High Court for the Agricola teen’s 2012 murder.
Relatives said yesterday that hopes of the man, who has been missing for 12 days, still being alive are fading, and an anonymous caller claimed that he had been beaten to death.
Greenidge, 26, of John Fernandes Housing Scheme, went missing after he failed to return home Wednesday October 15. He reportedly left to collect his salary from his employer in Diamond, East Bank Demerara. A formal missing person’s report was made the following Saturday.
Greenidge’s mother Seeta Persaud, told Stabroek News that she had received a call on Wednesday October 22, from someone who told her that her son had been beaten to death and buried. She said the female caller, who blocked her number, informed her that her Greenfield Park house was broken into twice and that her son might have been involved. She added that the caller claimed that some men were talking about beating Greenidge and burying him in the area.
Persaud said following that call she visited the Providence Police Station on Thursday and presented the phone to ranks there. However, she said she was referred to the Brickdam Police station, where she met with a senior Criminal Investigations Department officer, who collected the phone to assist with investigations into her son’s disappearance.
When this publication enquired whether Greenidge had had any run-ins with the law, the woman said that he was among the young men at Agricola, when 17-year-old Shaquille Grant was murdered during a police operation in the community. “He was the second one they were going to shoot,” Persaud claimed.
However, when asked if she believed there was a nexus between his disappearance and his involvement in the murder case, she said she did not know.
The death of Grant, 17, of lot 72 ‘BB’ Eccles, East Bank Demerara, was met with outrage in Agricola, as eyewitnesses had said that one officer was seen standing over the teen as he fired bullets into his body. Greenidge, a friend of the deceased, had testified during the PI that saw Police Constable Terrence Wallace being committed to stand trial for Grant’s murder.
“As I stand up here as a mother,” Persaud told this newspaper, “me ain’t leaving me son.” Furthermore, the emotional woman said, “I got to get he [Greenidge].”
She questioned the alleged beating to death of her son over the break and enter accusation. All attempts at retrieving an update from Police Crime Chief Leslie James in relation to Greenidge’s disappearance, proved futile.
