Search still on for missing hire car driver …Family appeals for public assistance

Dec 03, 2015 News

Five days have elapsed but the search continues for missing hire car driver, Colin Clarke.

Missing driver
Colin Clarke

Clarke, popularly known as “Ole Boy” of Crane Housing Scheme, West Coast Demerara, was last seen around 17:00 hours on Friday, in the area where he works.
Both the 55-year-old man and a silver-grey Toyota Allion motor car, HC 4993, which he operates, disappeared.
The man‘s relatives have been on the lookout ever since but they have received no word about his whereabouts. As such, the family is seeking the assistance from the public to locate the missing man.
Maureen Clarke noted that when she last saw her brother, he was wearing a brown shirt and black pants.
According to her, he would never go anywhere without informing his family members. “As far as we know he didn’t have no problems with nobody; that why it so strange.” The woman said, too, that her brother has no mental or physical illness.
“Is not like he would go somewhere and get lost. My brother been driving bus on that road for years. Is only six weeks ago, he started working this car,” she explained.
The woman and her 83-year-old mother have since been on the hunt to find her brother.
“We ain’t hearing nothing from nobody; we report it to the police. We check with all he friends and our family.
The family has expressed fear that the man may have fallen prey to carjacking or worse, that he might be dead.
“I don’t know if somebody hire him and do he something. Since Friday we haven’t seen or heard from him. The police at Vreed-en-Hoop say they have no trace of the car.”
She had explained that the car is owned by her niece’s mother. Clarke will usually pick it up every morning from Sister’s Village to carry out his daily work.
He would normally return the car around 19:00 hours every day, but this did not happen on Friday.
The following day, the police were contacted and along with relatives, they began making enquiries about his whereabouts.
But with every passing day, relatives’ hopes of finding Clarke alive are dwindling. Anyone having information about the whereabouts of the missing driver can contact his relatives on telephone number 254-1766 or contact the nearest police station.
Clarke’s disappearance comes exactly one month after another taxi driver, Shurland Dalloo, went missing.
Dalloo’s body was found one week later in a canal at Onverwagt, No 27, West Coast Berbice.
The fully clad and decomposing remains were found in a desolate area that is accessible by dam, about three and a half miles off the West Berbice Public Road.
Dalloo also operated on West Coast Demerara but was based at Parika. His car, too, a silver grey Toyota Carina, has not been recovered.
Police believe that the taxi driver was taken to the location and slain.
His corpse with its head bashed in was then dumped into the canal and covered with weeds.
Meanwhile, police on the East Coast of Demerara are still searching from a silver grey Toyota Premio which was stolen from its owner last Saturday night at Bachelor’s Adventure.
This newspaper understands that the driver of the car, who hails from Mahaica, had picked up three men to take them to Bachelor’s Adventure, about seven miles away.
When the car reached Church Road, Bachelor’s Adventure, the men held up the driver and relieved him of the car.