Latest update April 7th, 2025 6:08 AM
Jan 24, 2012 News
– No news of sailors, owner refused to speak.
One week of continuous efforts by this publication to contact the owner, Shirab Sears, of the 2005 missing vessel, Dixie, has proved futile.
Dixie went missing in 2005 with four Guyanese sailors– John Layne, Jay Gibson, Ron Medouze and Dexter Richmond– while it was transporting cargo to Provinciales in the Turks and Caicos.
The vessel was discovered four years later in the ‘mud bank’ of Haiti but there was still no news of the sailors.
Although the vessel was discovered in 2009, Sears kept it a secret.
The families of the sailors, however, were informed about the vessel’s discovery late last year by several persons.
They then confronted Sears, who admitted that Dixie was indeed discovered. Now the question of why the families weren’t informed remains.
Also, questions about what “exactly” the vessel was transporting surfaced.
According to Mrs. Gibson, when Sears admitted that the vessel was discovered in 2009, she spoke to him about her husband’s benefits, given that her husband had worked for a year with him.
Mrs. Gibson told Kaieteur News that she was told by Sears that the matter concerning the insurance of the boat is currently in Court in Trinidad and Tobago, and whenever he claims the money he will give the family a portion out of “goodwill.”
Now persons are wondering whether the sailors were kidnapped. Also, many persons have assumed that the boat’s disappearance and its discovery could have been a ploy.
Dixie was registered to KRS Transport Ltd, a local charter company.
The Dixie left Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic on June 18, 2005 for Provinciales in the Turks and Caicos, where it was supposed to arrive the next day with the load of concrete blocks. It never did.
When there was no trace of the tug or the men the next day, they were reported missing and the Coast Guard began an immediate search for them.
Teams from the Coast Guard in both the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos were at the helm of the search operation with support of the US Coast Guard. Local fishing boats in the island were also involved in the search parade.
Layne was the captain of the tug, Gibson the engineer, while Medouze and Richmond were the deckhand.
At that time many had assumed that the vessel probably had sunk and the search had ended.
Then the vessel was discovered but the owner kept it a secret.
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