Search for missing couple ends in grief

Ear-piercing wails shattered the atmosphere as a thin thread of hope turned to inconsolable grief in the bushes near Naseberry Grove in Kitson Town, St Catherine, on Monday when a search party looking for a missing woman and her boyfriend stumbled upon a gruesome find.

Thirty-eight-year-old Georgia Blunt and her 42-year-old partner, Ruel Fuller, had gone to tend to cows they were raising in a section of the community about 1 p.m. on Saturday, but failed to return home.

As anxious relatives and residents, accompanied by police officers, searched the bushes on Monday morning, the bodies of the couple were found in separate rooms in an abandoned house with the hands bound behind their backs. Their feet were also bound with rope and they had what appeared to be gunshot wounds to the heads.

The macabre sight jolted relatives and members of the search party as their worst fears were realised.

“I couldn’t sleep. I went to bed and all I could see was the two of them in front of me,” Blunt’s sister, Joy Johnally, told The Gleaner of the worry which consumed her as the couple remained missing for more than a day.

“I don’t know how I am going to deal with this,” she continued. “She is the last one for my mother, very loving and does not interfere with anyone. She was working so hard to achieve something and to know that somebody just come and snatched it away like this, it pains my heart.”

As members of the search party, who were ahead of Johnally and two other sisters, indicated that the bodies were spotted in the building, the trio broke down.

“I can’t believe that people would be so wicked. I just couldn’t look at the bodies. They used the same rope from the cows to tie them up. Two of the cows are missing, but we can’t say if they were stolen,”Johnally said, adding that she did not believe robbery was the motive.

Blunt, who was engaged in livestock farming, had recently acquired a water truck and was supplying the commodity to residents in the Kitson Town area in light of a water crisis. The police discovered the truck at the spot where they had gone to feed the cows.

Residents described Blunt as a loving, hard-working, ambitious woman with a knack for business, adding that she got along with everyone.

She was destined for success, they agreed.

Earlier on Monday, the irate residents, who were sympathetic to the plight of the family, mounted a roadblock along the Kitson Town main road, protesting what they said was a reluctance by the police to organise the search for the missing couple from Sunday.

The St Catherine North Police released an incident report on Monday shortly after the bodies were found, claiming that Fuller and Blunt were reported missing on Sunday.

The police say they assisted with searches and about 9:45 a.m. on Monday, the bodies were found.

No motive for the killings has been established, the police added.