标签： Bahamas

A multi-day search operation in Exuma, Bahamas, has ended in tragedy after authorities recovered the body of 23-year-old Andrew Sears Jr., a man who had been released on bail, from shallow waters close to Madam Dau’s Cay on Wednesday. The grim discovery came 24 hours after Sears placed an emergency distress call to local law enforcement, which immediately launched a manhunt across the region.

Initial search efforts focused on the Barraterre community following the Tuesday distress call, but first responding teams were unable to locate the missing young man. To expand the search, a specialized search and rescue unit was deployed from New Providence, combining advanced drone surveillance, tracking canine units, and electronic ankle monitoring data to narrow down Sears’s location. The combined resources ultimately led recovery teams to the shallow waters where his body was found.

When officers recovered the body, Sears’s father, Andrew Sears Sr., was present at the scene to identify his son and accompany law enforcement as the remains were transported to the Exuma mainland for further processing. The elder Sears told reporters that police first contacted him shortly after receiving his son’s distress call on Tuesday, asking for information about his potential whereabouts. Because Sears Sr. lives a considerable distance from the search area, he told officers he had no information to share on his son’s location.

After being notified, the father attempted multiple times to reach his son via phone call and text message, but all attempts to connect went unanswered. “To be honest, when the officer called me, my mind was done prepared for the worse, but I was praying and hoping for the best,” Sears Sr. recalled in an interview. “Like I tell the officer when I reach there, there’s nobody in the world that could have an ankle monitoring bracelet who still alive and y’all ain’t see that (moving). I say only two things could really happen. Either he cut off the monitor and leave it there or he pass out and sleeping some place in the bush. The only thing we could try do is locate him.”

Sears Sr. added that he was not aware police had already tracked his son’s general location via the ankle monitor before the body was found in the water. Despite overwhelming grief, the elder Sears stayed to assist law enforcement with their recovery effort, working to keep his composure at the scene. “When we reach there, my eyes become full, but what could I do? I didn’t want to make another problem on the scene,” he said.

The grieving father expressed gratitude to police for the speed and effort they put into the search operation, noting that the entire family has been shattered by the loss. He shared that he has been unable to sleep since learning of his son’s death, and that Sears Jr.’s mother and siblings are also struggling deeply to cope with the sudden tragedy.

When asked if he suspected foul play played a role in his son’s death, Sears Sr. declined to speculate, saying the family is focused on waiting for official investigation results to get clear answers. He added that the last time he spoke to his son was the previous Friday, and at no point did the 23-year-old indicate he felt his life was in danger. Sears Sr. confirmed he was aware of a recent legal dispute involving his son and a resident of Barraterre, but said the family had left the matter to be resolved through the court system.

Friends and family remember Andrew Sears Jr. as a warm, loving young man. He was self-employed, running a small landscaping and construction business, and had recently been planning to expand his operations to serve more clients.

As of Thursday, Bahamian police have not yet officially classified the death as suspicious, accidental, or the result of foul play. A full autopsy has been scheduled to determine the exact cause of Sears Jr.’s death, which will allow investigators to move forward with their probe into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

An 80-year-old American military veteran who ran his 35-foot sailboat aground on a Bahamian reef after two straight days of manual steering without sleep is speaking out about the overwhelming compassion he received from local fishermen and rescue workers who brought him safely to shore and helped repair his damaged vessel for the onward journey to Florida.

The incident unfolded earlier this month as Raymond Rosen set sail from the Dominican Republic’s northern coast bound for Hollywood, Florida, where he planned to visit his 101-year-old mother. What should have been a familiar voyage turned dangerous when a series of unexpected challenges left Rosen stranded hundreds of meters from shore.

Rosen explained that his boat’s engine had failed before departure, leaving him unable to rely on his autopilot system — which requires engine power to keep the navigation batteries charged. With no experienced sailing partner available to join the trip, he took on the full burden of steering the vessel by hand nonstop for nearly 48 hours. Having made the same crossing before with a co-pilot, Rosen admitted he had drastically underestimated the physical and mental toll of navigating alone for such a long stretch.

“After two nights without any sleep, I was hand steering for two days, and on the third night without any sleep, at one or three o’clock in the morning, I crashed into the reef off of the cay,” Rosen recalled. He added that he had deviated from his planned stop at Salt Cay to attempt a navigation check near West Caicos, but failed to spot his target landmark before falling into an exhausted sleep.

When he woke, a deafening crashing noise jolted him awake. Still disoriented from sleep deprivation, he initially believed he had been knocked off course in the open ocean, only to realize his sailboat had run aground on a reef just hundreds of meters from a beach near Booby Cay, a small islet off Mayaguana, the southernmost island of the Bahamas.

After confirming his vessel was irreparably stuck, Rosen deployed his emergency positioning beacon into the water and waited for official rescue teams to respond. Hours passed with no sign of a coast guard response, but that did not mean he was alone. Local fishermen out on a routine catch spotted the sailboat’s mast sticking up above the water and immediately altered their course to investigate.

Lloyd Strachan, one of the fishermen who joined the rescue, explained that he and his two crewmates were harvesting conch near Booby Cay when they spotted the stranded vessel. When they reached the reef, they found the elderly veteran weak and in distress. Though their boat was already loaded with the day’s catch and their fuel supply was only calculated for the planned fishing route, they did not hesitate to prioritize helping Rosen. Strachan noted that fuel costs have risen sharply in the region, currently running around $9 a gallon, making the unplanned detour an additional financial burden — but he stressed that human life will always outweigh any temporary economic loss. “Life comes first,” he said firmly.

Strachan told reporters Rosen told him he had not eaten for two days and was severely dehydrated, so the team rushed to get him to shore as quickly as possible, telling him to grab only his most important documents and belongings before transferring him to their fishing boat.

Once Rosen was brought ashore, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force notified Patrick Collie, superintendent of Mayaguana’s volunteer search and rescue team, shortly after 6 a.m. Collie immediately set out on the 27-mile trip to Booby Cay to assist. By the time he arrived, the fishermen had already extracted Rosen from the damaged sailboat.

Collie, who has spent 18 years working in land and sea rescue on Mayaguana and received specialized rescue training from the U.S. military, initially assumed the sailboat was too badly damaged to salvage. When he inspected the vessel and found it was still afloat, he launched a recovery operation to pull it off the reef. Rosen was taken to a local clinic for a medical assessment and treatment for dehydration, then settled into a local hotel while Collie and his team worked to repair the boat. Over two days, the team removed the sailboat from the reef, fixed the broken engine, repaired a leaking rudder, and got the vessel back into seaworthy condition.

Beyond repairing the boat, Collie also arranged for an experienced local sailor to accompany Rosen for the final leg of his journey to Florida, to prevent a repeat of the dangerous exhaustion that caused the grounding. Collie emphasized that for him, the job of a rescuer does not end when the stranded person reaches land. “As the search and rescue man, for me, my job finished when they see he up on land. But as the human side, my job finished when I see he up and running and leaving Mayaguana in good condition,” he explained.

Looking back on his frightening ordeal, Rosen said the experience exposed him to both kindness and hardship, but he made a point to single out Collie and the local fishermen for extraordinary praise. “I ran into the best of humanity and the worst of humanity all in one spot,” he said. “Patrick Collie is the best of humanity.”

A pre-trial defendant facing multiple serious violent crime charges has been killed in a targeted drive-by shooting in the Kemp Road area, sending shockwaves through local communities and raising fresh questions about public safety in the region. The 23-year-old victim, identified by close sources as Robertho Clairvius, was out on bail and under court-ordered electronic monitoring when the attack unfolded on the evening of the incident, along Lyon Road just off the main Kemp Road corridor.

Law enforcement has not released an official public identification of the deceased as of the latest updates, but confirmed that the man was under active electronic surveillance as a condition of his recent bail release. Preliminary investigative briefings from officers at the crime scene outline a clear sequence of events: Clairvius was on foot, traveling toward his nearby home when an unidentified vehicle pulled alongside him. Multiple occupants inside the vehicle opened fire with firearms, striking the 23-year-old multiple times and inflicting fatal wounds.

Clairvius’ legal history dates back to 2022, when he was first charged with three separate violent offenses that he was set to face trial for. Prosecutors’ case files detail that on September 26 that year, when Clairvius was 18 years old, he allegedly carried out an armed robbery of a local man named Keithrovan Butler. According to the prosecution’s allegations, Clairvius was armed with a machine gun during the incident and stole $1,440 from Butler.

Just nine days after the alleged robbery, on October 5, 2022, prosecutors say Clairvius committed the fatal shooting that made up the most serious charge against him. The shooting took place at Apache Alley, another location just off Kemp Road. In that incident, he is accused of killing Arlington “Quack” Stubbs and leaving a 16-year-old juvenile girl with non-fatal gunshot wounds. Additional charges of attempted murder were added to his case as a result of the girl’s injuries.

As of the latest update, law enforcement has not announced any arrests in connection with the drive-by killing that killed Clairvius. Investigations into the identity of the attackers, the motive for the shooting, and other key details remain ongoing, with detectives working through evidence collected at the scene and witness statements to build a full picture of the incident.

For Kermit Adderley Jr., the pain of losing his mother in a 2018 North Andros plane crash never fully faded. Now, a second deadly aviation disaster on the same stretch of the Bahamian island has not only resurrected devastating old memories – it has reinforced a devastating truth: the systemic gaps that turned his family’s grief into an agonizing six-month wait to bury his mother have never been fixed.

In January 2018, Margaret Adderley was one of six people killed when their Piper Aztec aircraft, en route from North Andros to New Providence, crashed into the ocean. All passengers and crew on board died. More than eight years later, critical questions surrounding the tragedy – including whether the aircraft carried valid insurance – remain unanswered for the Adderley family. To make matters worse, the family was forced to wait nearly six months to lay Margaret to rest, held up by crippling delays in receiving DNA forensic testing results needed to formally identify her remains. Adderley, a 39-year-old licensed customs broker, says even his mother, who was among the first victims to be identified, faced an interminable wait; other families affected by the 2018 crash waited far longer.

That prolonged uncertainty inflicted lasting damage on his family, Adderley says. As they tried to rebuild a sense of normalcy and return to daily routines, repeated delays kept reopening their emotional wounds. Adderley’s younger brother, a teenager at the time of the crash, withdrew deeply into himself as he struggled to process the loss and the endless wait. Even now, years later, Adderley’s young daughter still asks for answers about what happened to her grandmother.

On July 10, Independence Day in the Bahamas, that nightmare repeated itself: another small plane crashed near San Andros Airport on North Andros, killing all 10 people on board. The lone survivor pulled from the burned wreckage, Macaro Rolle – who is related to Adderley’s wife – later succumbed to his injuries. Adderley says when news of the crash broke during a family gathering, the room fell instantly silent and numb. For his family, who already knew the weight of this kind of tragedy, the impact was immediate. Multiple relatives, including some of his aunts, were so shaken they had to sit down to recover their composure.

Worse still, the same failure that prolonged Adderley’s grief is already repeating itself for the 10 newly affected families. Relatives of the latest victims have been told they face an eight-week wait for DNA testing results before they can identify and bury their loved ones, whose bodies were severely burned in the crash.

Adderley says that wait is almost certain to stretch far longer than eight weeks – a timeline he knows from firsthand experience. “I feel for them, but I’ve already lived that. I wouldn’t allow the government to tell me six to eight weeks because I know firsthand it takes longer than that,” he said.

At the root of the ongoing crisis, Adderley argues, is the Bahamas’ continued reliance on overseas forensic laboratories to conduct critical DNA testing, a policy he calls “kind of crazy.” For years, he says, governments have poured funding into other priorities, while neglecting to invest in a fully functional national forensic lab that could cut down on wait times for grieving families. It is only after major tragedies that policymakers acknowledge the urgent need for reform, Adderley says, and no meaningful change ever comes between disasters. “It’s disappointing to know that you now have ten families who have to go through the same process again. It’s not until tragedies like this happen that there’s a cry or need for better solution to the problems that we face as the people,” he said.

Air accident investigators ultimately concluded the 2018 crash was caused by pilot error, citing the pilot’s limited qualifications and inexperience, combined with poor weather conditions, as the key contributing factors. But that official finding has not filled the gap of unanswered questions for the Adderley family, who have gotten little closure eight years on. “Nothing came out of the crash other than a death,” Adderley said. “No answers.”

Beyond pushing for a domestic forensic lab, Adderley is calling on the Bahamian government to introduce emergency financial support for families left bereaved by sudden disasters like plane crashes. Funeral costs impose a heavy, unexpected burden on families already reeling from grief, he notes, and even small targeted assistance would make a major difference. Adderley says his own family was able to absorb the costs, but if his mother had been the sole breadwinner, their situation would have been far direr. Even modest compensation to help offset end-of-life expenses, he argues, would offer a small measure of support to families at their most vulnerable.

Adderley’s message to the newly affected families is one of solidarity, but he holds out little hope for a quick resolution to their ordeal. “You hear all kind of things when you find yourselves in that situation but I just ask that those families, they just stick together and try to get some type of clarity and resolution but it’s not going to come now. The release is not going to come now.”