BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – INTENSE investigation by the investigative arm of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force has led to the arrest and murder charge of a young man from St. Paul’s Village.
He is Gavin Browne of Willet’s Housing Project, charged with the murder of 53-year-old Basil Alfred Phipps of Saddler’s Village whose partly decomposed body was found on Monday, January 19, 2015 among some tall grass in Wharton’s Hill (White Gate area).
On Saturday (Jan. 17), Phipps’ relatives had reported to the Dieppe Bay Police Station that they had last seen him at about 7:00 a.m. on Thursday (Jan. 15) and a missing person bulletin was subsequently dispatched to various media houses.
Since then, a number of search parties were organised that comprised police officers, family members and friends. However, it was not until some minutes to 12 noon on Monday (Jan. 19) when a party led by Sergeant Wyatt had located his partly-decomposed body with a wound to the right side of his head.
This publication was told that Phipps would habitually journey on foot from his Saddlers Village home to St. Paul’s Village to purchase alcoholic beverage, which he would place in a plastic bottle he always carried in his back pocket.
It was suggested that he might have been on his way home when the incident occurred and was dragged into the tall grass after being struck on his head.
He was pronounced dead by Dr. Valery Alexandrov, a Trinidad-based forensic pathologist, who also performed an autopsy on his remains and found that death was as a result of multiple homicidal chop wounds to the head and upper body.
Basil Alfred Phipps’ death had taken the number of murders committed in the Federation for the year to three; one on Nevis and two on St. Kitts.
The first victim was 31-year-old Devon ‘Kobe’ Griffin, a passenger bus driver, who was shot and killed near his Rawlins Village Nevis home on the evening of January 9.
The second victim was 54-year-old Elroy Malone of Willett’s Housing Project, who went missing on January 3 and whose body was discovered on January 13 in an area in Willett’s Village known as Amsterdam Ghaut.
Dr. Alexandrov performed an autopsy on his body and declared that death was due to “multiple homicidal chop wounds to the head”.
