BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – A pall of gloom hovered over the Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw International Airport this morning (Mar. 30) following the discovery of one of the entity’s employees’ partly decomposed body within an elevator.
The dead man’s name was given to this media house as Askeo Farrell, also known as Askeo Jeffers and Ras Jahred of McKnight and that he was a maintenance employee attached to the RLB Int. Airport.
According to a reliable source, the deceased had been missing since Friday (Mar. 28) and was only discovered by his colleagues today when they were sent to continue repairs on the broken elevator on which he was working.
“De men went in to continue repairs and wan ah dem come sey deh smell sumting smelling bad comin’ from de elevator. And when deh check it out deh see is Askeo been in deh,” the source said.
The source also told this publication that firemen from the St. Kitts and Nevis Fire and Rescue Services Department and officers from the Crime Scene Unit of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force were immediately contacted.
At the scene this morning, a fireman was seen running through the arrival door of the airport with an electric saw, while a police officer with a crowbar was heading towards the elevator.
SKNVibes was informed that the fire and police officials took approximately two and a half hours to retrieve the body from the elevator before it was removed from the scene by undertakers from Jenkins Funeral Home.
While the relatives and friends of the dead man were briefed on the horrifying news, employees of the airport began to gather and embrace family members who were too inconsolable to speak to this publication.
As the partly decomposed body of the man was being removed from the elevator, one of the man’s relatives remarked: “Me arm! No! How him dead? All de time he been in deh nobody ain’t see nuttin, nuttin at all. You mean fuh tell meh de lef him in deh fuh dead?”
A friend of the late airport employee told this publication that Askeo had contacted his girlfriend on Friday to pick him up from work around 6:00 p.m., but when she got there he could not have been located.
“She turn up at de airport to pick him up and she keep calling his phone but he never answered. So she waited about an hour and nobody didn’t see or hear from him.”
He added that as the night progressed, relatives became worried as calls to the maintenance man’s phone were not answered and employees from the airport had no knowledge of where he was.
Unconfirmed reports reaching this publication stated that the man was working alone on the non-functional elevator.
It is unclear as to what exactly cause the death of the 34-year-old man or why no member of the maintenance crew did not realise he was missing.
No official of the RLB International Airport was on hand to provide this publication with a comment.
