Barbados Today

One moment fisherman Peter Holder was “drinking two beers” and having fun with his friends at Seaside Bar in Bathsheba, St Joseph, the next second, Holder, in his sixties, was dead.

“Peter was here sitting down, drinking two beers, laughing and making fun like normal and then he was unresponsive,” a shocked Paul Bootman Barrow told Barbados TODAY as he reflected on the suddenness of his friend’s passing Wednesday night.

“It shock me,” Barrow added.

“But how he pass away is how I know Peter; peaceful. I never see Peter in a fight or in a noise with anyone. He was a cool guy and everybody would tell you that.”

As Holder’s relatives and friends tried to make sense of his passing, his niece Jacqueline Holder said her uncle was a quiet but independent person.

“My uncle Peter was the kind of person not to beg for anything, even when his back was pushed against the wall. You would have to ask him if he needed something; but he would never come and beg,” she said.

While the people of Holder’s home community of Tent Bay, St Joseph were trying to come to grips with his death last night, the communty of Consett Bay, St John, less than 12 kilometres away, was rocked by another sudden death this morning.

Dead is 52-year-old Joel Clarke, assistant supervisor at Consett Bay Fish Market for the last six years.

It was not immediately known how the father of two, who resided in Cave Hill, St Michael with his wife, died.

However, a worker at the market, who asked that she not be identified, said when she last saw Clarke Wednesday he seemed to be “in good health”.

“I am just shocked. You see a person yesterday in good health, then to hear two twos, he dead,” the woman told Barbados TODAY.

Friends at the shop opposite the market spoke fondly of Clarke, an avid card and domino player.

John Marshall and Clarke were friends for six years.

They were together in the shop yesterday, where Clarke played a game of cards.

“Yesterday he sat out here and he didn’t show any signs of being sick or complained of any sickness. In fact he sat in this same seat and played cards.

“Joel was always a very peaceful man and any morning that he came to work tired you could bet that he was out dancing the [previous] night. We are all very shocked by his passing,” Marshall said.