NORTH?AMERICAN?RELATIVES of a Bajan businessman are putting up a BDS$50 000 reward for evidence that leads to the conviction in Barbados of attackers who severely beat George Clarke, robbed him, and left him close to death in a pig pen in St Philip in February.
The decision to hike the reward from $10 000 came after Clarke, 67, died a few days ago in a Brooklyn medical centre where he had been a patient since June, suffering extensive brain damage from the assault with a hammer by unknown assailants.
“The police in Barbados have been unable to solve the crime by bringing those responsible to justice,” said Bertram Clarke, a retired insurance executive in Canada and the victim’s brother.
“We are hoping the $50 000 reward would serve as an inducement to those who know something about what happened. We are praying they would step forward and help the police. This case has now gone from assault and robbery to murder.”
Clarke was hospitalised at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for almost four months before his daughters and his wife in New York decided to bring him to the city for further medical care after his condition deteriorated.
Marsha Clarke, 36, a grieving daughter, said they decided to seek treatment in New York City because they weren’t satisfied with the level of care at home. Although he wasn’t in a coma, she said, he was unable to say who attacked him.
“We are devastated by what happened to him,” she told the SUNDAY?SUN in New York City.
“In the last two years he would tell me that someone stole animals. This year it seemed as if animals were being stolen every weekend.
“The only conclusion we have come to so far is that he interrupted a robbery, or somebody who knew his routine set it up; so it was personal.
“It might have been someone close to him who knew he was going to be at that farm at a certain time in the morning with money on his person.
“They may have arranged it so that if they didn’t do it themselves, someone was sent to do it. We believe he was attacked by someone he knew, but we really don’t know.
“We are hoping people with information would come forward and help the police in their investigation.
“My father was pursuing the dream of becoming a farmer in his homeland, only for this to occur. You can’t imagine how we feel at this time.
“He had a reputation for carrying around a lot of money and that was something he had from back here in the States,” she pointed out.
“He always had cash on him because he did cash transactions. He was from the old school [not] to be walking around with a debit card or a cheque book.
“He had a licensed gun and depending on what was happening in Barbados, he probably felt a need to carry one on his person.
“I don’t believe it was a random stranger who noticed that this old man was there by himself.”
Clarke, who ran a successful boiler repair and asbestos removal company in Brooklyn with several employees, sold his business, bought two spots of land in Barbados, returned there in 2006 and began growing vegetables and raising pigs, goats and sheep on his four-acre farm in St Philip where he was attacked, reportedly, around six o’clock in the morning.
Bertram Clarke, who grew up with his brother in Sealy Hall, St John, explained that George came to the United States in the 1960s and set out to make a living through sheer hard work and risk-taking.
“He went into business for himself and made a success out of it,” said the brother who lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.
“But he always had the dream of someday going back home and running a farm. He achieved that when he went into business there.
“He was quite generous with employees and organisations but expected people to do what was required of them.
“George would insist on employees’ performing their jobs and he would give them several chances. Sometimes he would dismiss them but rehire them so they wouldn’t suffer. He was that type of person.”
Joe Blades, a boyhood friend of the dead man, described him as an “extremely generous” person who routinely helped community organisations and churches in New York and Barbados by contributing to their fund-raising activities.
