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Family mourns as Shonette Dover laid to rest
Scenes from Shonette’s Dover’s funeral.
Kaieteur News – There was barely a dry eye at the Christianburg Community Centre Ground, Linden, as scores of persons, many who journeyed from afar, gathered to pay their last respects to Shonette Dover, murdered at the hands of her now fugitive boyfriend, Shaquawn Alleyne.
Shonette Dover.
The relatives in red jerseys, which signified bloodshed, were inconsolable with screams for justice resounding over the death of the young woman, whose decomposed body rested inside a closed casket.
The short but poignant ceremony was the climax of one stage of closure, which the family had sought since the young woman went missing on April 3, 2021. Though they had hoped to see her alive, they had also wanted to give her a proper burial if she was dead. Shonette’s paternal grandmother expressed how much it hurt to bury her granddaughter but said all is not lost, since justice must be served. “It is indeed a grievous afternoon, today is hurts deeply to see what went wrong, but the good Lord will give us justice, I stand for justice, God will give us the strength. Whatsoever a man soweth, he shall reap and God will take full control, may her soul rest in peace,” she said during her tribute.
One cousin expressed how painful it was to bury a family member who had just begun to live. “Shonette was very loved by us and to see her go down like this, it is really hard for us to make it but we are trying to make it with the help of the Lord. It hurts so much and even as I stand here, we are saying, we need justice and justice we must get for our loved one that is gone, she is gone too soon.”
In the eulogy, Shonette was described as a talented, unique, fashionable and loving young woman. She attended the Mount Carmel Nursery School and the St. Aidan’s Anglican School, where she was successful at the Common Entrance Examination and was awarded a place at the Christianburg Wismar Secondary School. After graduating from CWSS, Shonette landed herself a job at the Watooka Guest House, before moving to the New-Tech Snackette. “She was a fashionable young woman, loved to design hair, she was a talented person, she enjoyed designing her sister’s and family hair. She was soft spoken, unique and loving, oh what a beauty, she was a queen, natural beauty,” said her relative who eulogised her.
In his sermon, Pastor Andrew Marks prayed that the family be comforted at the sad time and urged the residents of Linden to use this incident to unite and to look out for each other. “I want to challenge you today, let us be our brother’s keeper, let us be our sister’s keeper, let us be people who will bear each other up instead of tearing each other down, I want to challenge you today, this situation must cause every community in Linden to come together, I’m talking about the villages, whether you are from Christianburg, whether you are from Blue Berry Hill, whether you are from Canvas City… This incident must cause people to recognise that this situation must not happen in our community, neither in our town again,” he said.
During the final viewing session, mourners called for the police to aggressively pursue her killer, Alleyne, who went on the run shortly before Shonette’s body was discovered on Friday, April 30, in a shallow grave at the back of his Canvas City residence where the two lived before she died. Shonette Dover was reported missing on Sunday, April 4 by the very same boyfriend who told her relatives that he had no idea where she was and assumed that she left for work. Dover’s 15-year-old relative who had admitted to helping Alleyne burying the young woman’s body and led police to the site, has since been charged with accessory after the fact of murder and remanded to the Juvenile Detention Centre. A post mortem examination conducted found that Shonette died from a single gunshot wound to her head.
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