Son’s brutal murder leaves mom grief-stricken, unable to celebrate Mother’s Day

May 08, 2022 News

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Kaieteur News
By Shervin Belgrave
Many mothers are being celebrated today for their nurturing role but 58-year-old Yvonne Fredricks wants no part of the festivities as she is grieving the loss of her loving son, 27-year-old Noel Fredricks, whose life was taken brutally by his ‘friend’.
But ahead of the tragic news, she was prepared to celebrate this special day with her son. He had planned to host a “fancy barbeque and party” for her to celebrate Mother’s Day but the plans came to a halt after his decomposing body was found on Wednesday, April 27, last buried in an excavator hole in a Region Seven backdam.
What is even more heart breaking for Yvonne is that the man who confessed to killing her son was believed to be a “trusted friend”.
The still grieving woman recalled that her son had left her home at Mainstay/Whyaka Village, Essequibo, Region Two, in the first week of December 2021, and journeyed into the Toroparu Backdam, Lower Puruni River, Region Seven.
His sister, Maylene Fredricks, said he had gone there to work with a relative, Michael Gomes, on a dredge owned by Gomes’ daughter.
Noel had told his mother and siblings that he was going to return in time for the Easter holidays. His family heard from him last in February.
“He call us and he say, ‘we cutting one more pit and then ah coming home fuh the Easter’,” Maylene recounted.
His mother was not so much focused on the Easter holidays since we was more excited about the plans he was making to celebrate Mother’s Day.
“He tell me ‘mammy, you gon see me fuh Mother’s Day’,” the woman said of her son as she reminisced on the last day she spoke with him.
“He never left my home, he always lived with me and since my husband took ill with a stroke and got blind, he took up the role as the breadwinner of the family and never left my side,” Yvonne recalled.
In a somber tone she said, “He is the only one who used to mine me. Every Mother’s Day, he does give me a $100,000 and seh ‘mammy, this is fuh you, buy what you want’. He does buy everything we need in this house. He was even building a new house for us before he died.”
According to his sister, Maylene, Noel’s plan to finish the house was one of the reasons that he had gone to the backdam for work. The family, she noted, certainly did not expect that he would never be able to fulfill that goal.
Reports suggest that when Fredrick’s arrived in the backdam, he met a new friend, Quacy Shepherd also known as Dougla, a mechanic of Nabaclis, East Coast Demerara.
Shepherd was employed with another dredge but was camping near Fredrick’s camp in the Toroparu Backdam.
He had managed to gain both Noel and his relative, Gomes’ trust and would normally offer them drops to and from the backdam’s landing on his motorcycle.
On the eve of Good Friday (April 14, last), however, Shepherd reportedly revealed who he really was, and it wasn’t a friendly revelation.
Noel and Gomes were preparing to leave the backdam two days later to head home for the Easter holidays but before finalising their travel plans, Shepherd had dropped them to the Toroparu Backdam landing.
There, according to Gomes, they had all been drinking. They reportedly ended their drinking session and Shepherd had dropped them back to their camp close to 22:00hrs.
Gomes said that Noel did not stay at the camp but rather returned to the landing with Shepherd, presumably to continue drinking.
A shopkeeper remembered seeing Shepherd and Noel entering his shop. He, however, told them that he was about to lockup and recalled that Shepherd had bought a ‘drink’ for Noel and said, ‘I gah guh and drop this man back’.
The two left around 23:00hrs but Noel never made it back to camp that evening. After he failed to show up the following morning, Gomes and his co-workers started to look for Noel and when they could not find him, they confronted Shepherd but he told them that he had dropped him at a junction leading to his camp around 03:00hrs on April 15 (Good Friday).
The search party had found this suspicious since the journey from the landing to the camp was a mere 15 minutes on motorcycle. Nevertheless, they eventually brushed their suspicions aside and continued searching.
The search was fruitless and Gomes was forced to travel out of the backdam without Noel.
However, when he got home, he was afraid to relate to Noel’s mother and siblings that he was missing, so he lied and reportedly said, he had “broken crew and left.”
Maylene had told Kaieteur News that the family found Gomes’ story to be quite strange as it was unlike Noel to move to another location without informing them first.
Gomes reportedly could not keep his secret anymore and confided in the Mainstay/Whyaka Village Toshao that Noel had in fact gone missing since Good Friday.
Maylene said that after they learnt of this, she and another sibling travelled to Toroparu to look for Noel. “We gone in there and we spoke to his boss lady. She tell we that he work for over $2 million and that she still owed him four pennyweight of gold. She gave that to us and we went to his camp and we found that his things were still there,” recounted Maylene.
After they could not find him, the sister said that she decided to meet Shepherd, the man he was last seen alive with, and when she asked him about her brother’s whereabouts, he did not respond. “From the time I see him, I knew that he had done something with my brother, his eyes were wild and evil,” she said.
At that point, she decided to call her family back in Mainstay/Whyaka to share her suspicion that Noel was probably killed and buried.
She and her sibling left the backdam and Region Seven police started an investigation.
Gomes and Shepherd were later taken into custody and during an intense interrogation, police got a chilling confession. Shepherd told them that he had killed Noel and buried his body.
He alleged that after leaving the Toroparu Landing, Noel had asked him for sex and he’d agreed but when they were finished they got into a fight.
Shepherd further alleged that he had choked and covered Noel’s mouth simultaneously until he was motionless. After realising that he was dead, he said that he tied his hands behind his back and buried him in an excavator hole.
He led police to Noel’s body, which indeed was in the condition he described – hands tied behind the back.
An autopsy later revealed that Noel was struck to his head with a heavy object.
Police then decided to release Gomes and Shepherd was charged and remanded.

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