Missing MoBay homeless found

WESTERN BUREAU:

A MAN who has been roaming the streets of Negril, Westmoreland, for the last few months, has been identified as one of three homeless persons missing since the forced removal of 32 street people from Montego Bay in July 1999.

Nurse Joy Crooks, administrator of the Montego Bay-based Community for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), said CUMI was contacted by the Mental Health Officer for Westmoreland on Tuesday, about a man fitting the description of Dudley Bernard.

Bernard, who is in his late 60s and is of Indian descent, has been wandering through the resort town for sometime, and is receiving treatment from the parish's Mental Health Department. He had not been seen since the evening of July 14, 1999, the day when 32 street people were bound, pepper-sprayed and trucked to St. Elizabeth, where they were dumped near a mud lake.

"Because he fitted the description they were reading about in the paper, they asked him who he was and where he was from. He answered that he was Dudley Bernard and that he was from St. James," Nurse Crooks told The Gleaner on Wednesday.

Bernard reportedly also told mental health workers that he was trying to find his way back to St. James. Nurse Crooks said arrangements would be made to transport him back to the parish.

"The Mental Health Officer told me that he would be making arrangements to get him (Bernard) back to St. James, where he will be in the care of the Poor Relief Department", Nurse Crooks said.

There is still no word on two other street people who have disappeared since the incident two years ago. Still missing are Anthony Walker, who is of dark complexion and is in his mid 40s, and Dennis Hanson, of Anchovy, St. James.

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