FREEPORT – Bahamian police have detained a 12-year-old boy in the disappearances of five schoolboys, alleging that he buried one of them in a field after an accidental drowning, the boy’s mother told The Herald on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\nBrenda Roberts, the mother of Deangelo Stephan Dorval, said police officers took her son to a wooded lot behind their house early Monday and asked him to point out the area where he buried the body of Jake Grant, who has been missing since May.<\/p>\n
\nDorval denied any role in the death but hours later police announced that they had zeroed in on a lead in the case, roped off the lot and brought in cadaver-sniffing dogs.<\/p>\n
\n‘He said, `I don’t know where it [Grant’s body] is because I didn’t put it back there,’ ” Roberts quoted her son as saying, as she choked back tears. The two boys, both 12-year-old eighth graders, have been best friends since they lived in the same apartment building in 1999, Roberts said.<\/p>\n
\nPolice explained the theory to Grant’s family Tuesday. They didn’t buy it either.<\/p>\n
\nCLOSE FRIENDS<\/b>
\n”I don’t think none of that’s the truth. Jake and [Deangelo] were like this,” James Ellis, who has raised Jake since he was 2 years old, said, pinching his two fingers together. “Brothers, you see?”<\/p>\n
\nDeangelo’s detention does not appear to account for the fate of the four other boys who have disappeared since May in a case that has rocked the Bahamas, an island nation unaccustomed to major crimes.<\/p>\n
\nFIRST TO VANISH<\/b>
\nGrant disappeared first, and within two weeks Mackinson Colas, 12, and Deangelo McKenzie, 13, both vanished. Another boy, Junior Reme, 11, disappeared in July. The last to go missing, Desmond Rolle, disappeared Sept. 28.<\/p>\n
\nThe missing boys all vanished from the same area of Freeport, the Bahamas’ second largest city, and all but one worked bagging groceries at a local Winn-Dixie supermarket and played games at the same arcade — prompting investigators to link the disappearances.<\/p>\n
\nPolice have not revealed what evidence they have found, or how many people they have detained. Assistant Commissioner Ellison Greenslade, who heads the investigation, canceled a press conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\nRelatives said at least four people are now being detained — though not charged — in the disappearances; Dorval; Prince Mackey, 19, Deangelo’s cousin; Robert Don, 11, a neighborhood friend; and another 11-year-old playmate.<\/p>\n
\nDETAINED, RELEASED<\/b>
\nDorval’s mother also was detained over the weekend, but released Monday night.<\/p>\n
\nPolice told several of the relatives the same story:<\/p>\n
\nRobert Don and another friend claim that the night Jake disappeared, they saw him at a wake in a local apartment complex. Afterward the friends went back to Dorval’s apartment complex to swim. There, Jake accidentally drowned, and Deangelo, frightened, took him into the field and buried him rather than fess up to what had happened.<\/p>\n
\nRobert Don’s mother, Mirland, said Tuesday she hadn’t talked to her son about that night.<\/p>\n
\n”I don’t know what to believe,” she said, adding that she only wants her son, detained since Sunday, released. “They put him in a cell, and my boy is 11 years old. He didn’t commit a crime.”<\/p>\n
\nDorval maintains he last saw Jake the day before he disappeared, his mother said, when the two had been working on a research project for school on the Bahamas tourism industry.<\/p>\n
\nPolice first detained Dorval Aug. 8 but later released him. He was detained again Sunday, and has been at police headquarters since.<\/p>\n
\nPolice have harassed him in detention, his mother told The Herald in an interview, calling him a liar, and asking him to confess.<\/p>\n
\n‘He says, `Mom, everything I try to tell them, they tell me I’m a liar,’ ” Roberts recalled her son saying. The two talked often while they both were detained.<\/p>\n
\nBY MARIKA LYNCH
\nmlynch@herald.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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