The Tribune

By Ava Turnquest

Tribune Chief Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

THE disappearance of 40-year-old Marvin Pratt has darkened the Christmas holiday for his mother, who continues to appeal for authorities to bring her son home.

Barbara Saunders told The Tribune yesterday she believes her son is still alive and in police custody despite repeated denials from top officials.

Now, nearly one month since he was last seen by a neighbour, she recalled a conversation she had with Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis on Christmas Day.

“The PM call me yesterday morning,” she said, “and tell me Merry Christmas. I say, ‘how can you tell me Merry Christmas and your people pick up my son and can’t find him?’

“I tell him, ‘I don’t have no Christmas, my son went missing for a little while, I believe you have heard about it.’ He says he was off the island and he didn’t know about it, and just heard a little something when he reach back.

“He called and he said, ‘I heard you was trying to call me.’ When he said Merry Christmas, I said ‘I don’t have no Christmas, only y’all have Christmas,’ and I tell him what is what.”

She also said: “He (the prime minister) say he will check in with the commissioner. They can tell the commissioner anything. They need to find my child. I don’t care how they bring him, they need to bring him, bring him that’s my child.”

Mr Pratt’s family insists he was arrested by Drug Enforcement Unit (DEU) officers on December 5, a claim Police Commissioner Anthony Ferguson has denied.

Ms Saunders yesterday claimed it was not the first time her son was picked up by police with no formal arrest report entered in the system. 

“They always picking up people and not putting them in the system,” she said. “From he was younger he used to be in problems. I can tell you, he good and he bad. I see them pick him up and carry him before and they telling you he ain’t there. 

“Sometimes (police) they come down there when the boys on the corner and just slap ‘em up and tell them go home. That’s how they treat people children.”

Police are investigating the matter as a missing person case, and have suggested it is irresponsible for media to report the family’s claims.

However, last week the human rights group, Rights Bahamas, filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court seeking to compel the Royal Bahamas Police Force to produce the Gambier Village resident.

Yesterday, Ms Saunders said: “I still believe he’s alive because he ain’t come to me yet. I feel like he still alive. I feel like they have him some place and if that was an MP son they would search every car, every house, every corner. They would have this Bahamas dig up. It’s my time now, but we still on this earth. How could people be so cold and have children?

“(Marvin) live right in the back (of me). He was always there, ain’t had no children. Don’t care how old he is, he will always be my child. I ain’t have no Christmas. I used to do all the lights. I run couple white lights in the yard and a white light around his house, a light so he could see to come home.

“You cannot treat a human being like that. Whoever they is, whoever pick him, whoever had their hand inside it, something will happen to all of them. Whenever you do wrong to someone it does come back to you seven times you and your children. God above he see and he’s watching.”