A St George mother, puzzled by the disappearance of her young adult son, is longing to see his face again.
Crying out that her body was feeling tired from worrying about where Rahim Juwan Ward, 22, could be, Barbara Dorant Layne told Barbados TODAY at her Cottage Grove, St George home the only way she would begin to feel better was if she got some form of closure.
“Everyday as it goes by, for me, it gets harder because the days are longer. And I still don’t know where he is. No concrete evidence, nothing.
“At least I think I would feel better if I get closure, whether he come dead or alive, I would get closure. I want to see him,” Dorant Layne said.
Then addressing her missing son directly, she said: “Rahim, if you can hear me, come home. I would please like him to come home.
“Calling his phone and it keep going into voicemail up to yesterday morning, after that it just cutting out.”
Dorant Layne said what she believes to be a nightmare started around 2 a.m. last Saturday when police knocked on her door and informed her that there was a shooting in St Andrew and her son was in the victim’s company.
The injured individual had to receive medical attention, she said, but her son has not been seen or heard since.
She recalled that the last time she saw her son was after 5 p.m. on Friday when he told her: “Mummy, I gone”.
She said she knew he was headed to his grandmother’s house at Walkers Valley, where he was raised and where most of his friends live.
According to Ward’s grandmother, Virgene Dorant, he left her house around 9:30 p.m.
Dorant Layne further explained that the mother of Ward’s one-year-old daughter heard him around 10:30 p.m. when he sent her a message via WhatsApp asking what his daughter was doing.
As she held her granddaughter, she told Barbados TODAY: “I am at a loss as to what transpired. I don’t know if he get shoot, if he dead, I don’t know anything.
“For me, this is a situation that I cannot deal with because I don’t feel comfortable with him out there and not knowing where he is. I can’t sleep, I just cannot sleep.
“This is his daughter. She is only a year, and I don’t know where Rahim is. This is taking a toll on me, I just can’t deal with it. I do not know where Rahim is.”
The mother of two described her son as private and confidential. She said though he was secretive and genuinely quiet, there were times he was jovial.
“Rahim didn’t have any problems, I telling you,” she said.
“Rahim was one of those children that was happy and he had everything on a platter. Rahim didn’t have to worry about nothing.
“I made sure everything was there for him, and if I didn’t do it, my mother was Rahim’s backbone.
“I raised Rahim without a father. My husband raised my son and he is not his father.
“My mother made sure that Rahim get the best like any child. I really don’t know the circumstances surrounding his disappearance, I really wish I knew.”
Dorant Layne said that she did not know her son, an accounts assistant at the Barbados Public Workers’ Cooperative Credit Union, to be involved in any trouble though she acknowledged disliking the company he keeps.
But she said she has never received a complaint about him.
She said: “My problem is certain people he associate himself with I didn’t like it.
“But that fella that get shoot, I do not know this fella. I have never seen him.
“The only friends I know belongs to Raheim are the ones he raise up with, out by my mother. I only moved here in 2005.”
Ward, who is about six feet tall, of medium build and of light brown complexion, was wearing a long black jogger’s pants with white stripes at the sides, and a black shirt and black slippers.
Police at District ‘B” have appealed for information on the young man’s whereabouts, asking the public to contact the station at Boarded Hall at 437-4311, police emergency 211, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-Tips (8477) or the nearest police station.
anestahenry@barbadostoday.bb
