Latest update April 7th, 2025 6:08 AM
Dead Guyanese fisherman was set to travel home
Tortola (BVInews.com) -With Christmas just around the corner, Kendeye Thomas, the BVI resident who perished at sea over the weekend, was counting down the days for when he would have boarded a flight back to his native country, Guyana. He wasn’t the only one engaged in the countdown.
Dead: Kendeye Thomas1
December 23 was the date Thomas scheduled to reunite with his children, after not seeing them for about a year.
“The children were calling everyday asking for him, and just waiting for the day to come,” said Allison Bucchus, Thomas’ common-law wife.
“They got their hopes up high. They were saying they gonna greet him with hugs and kisses,” she recalled before bursting into tears at her Long Look home.
When Thomas boarded his vehicle and headed to sea on Sunday morning, fate decided to step in.
Plans for the Christmas reunion were immediately shattered.
On Monday morning, police reported that they recovered Thomas’ body at Larmer’s Bay, west of the original fishing site off Cooper Bay on the northern side of Tortola.
Thomas died after he, along with another Guyanese friend (Roger Fraser), was swept away by strong waves while fishing from rocks. Fraser is yet to be found. Another man who was among the fishing trio survived.
Bucchus said she last saw Thomas leaving home at Long Look early Sunday morning.
She recalled asking him: “You leaving?”
“He raised his hand and laughed, then tell me that he gone. This was my last time seeing him,” Bucchus further told BVI News Online.
The next time she heard any mention of her children’s father was Sunday afternoon when the lone survivor of the incident delivered the devastating news that Thomas and another man drowned at sea.
“I heard somebody come and said ‘Kende drown’. I didn’t believe because it’s years him on the water (fishing). He loved the sea (and) so I was never afraid for him.”
Bucchus further stated that it was not until she went to the morgue on Monday and saw the body, that reality finally sunk in.
“Me feel it; trust me. Me feel it!” she wept.
When BVI News visited the Long Bush area, Chilly Gumbs, a good friend of the deceased, was also in a reflective mode.
He said he and Thomas were good friends for approximately eight years. Gumbs remembered that, on the night before Thomas died, they had a long conversation about plans to “plaster” a building in the area. He is now left with the reality that such conversation was the last they shared.
“He was a very good friend of mine, and would always give me a helping hand with anything. It’s sad to see a good guy like Kende just gone like that,” Gumbs said.
“When I heard {about Thomas’ death}, it was a shock to me. Up until now, I can’t believe it.”
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