Hours before Hugh “Cullie Boy” McPherson was found dead along a Mahdia trail he was seen arguing with a man shortly after exiting a night club.
Several persons, a Mahdia resident (who chose to remain anonymous) said, passed by the men that night and would have briefly witnessed the confrontation.
“You really think anybody going to say that them see? Na, nobody not going to say that them see. In this place the motto is ah ain’t see, ah ain’t hear and ah ain’t know nothing,” the resident said.
At around 10.15 on Friday night, the resident said, McPherson left a popular Mahdia nightclub. It is unclear whether he left the club in company of the man but later the two were seen arguing along the road.
When Stabroek News spoke with McPherson’s relatives on Sunday they had said that the man and a relative who lives in Mahdia had “bad blood” between them because of a property dispute. Christina Vickerie, the dead man’s fiancée, also said that two Fridays ago McPherson had told her that he and the relative had argued.
However, the Mahdia resident told Stabroek News that since McPherson returned to the interior location mid last month he and the relative, who McPherson’s older siblings believe had something to do with his murder, did not have any confrontations.
“He [McPherson] is a trouble person…he always involved in something or the other,” another resident, who also requested anonymity, told Stabroek News last night. “Since he come back in here, he and [name of relative] ain’t argue or nothing… in fact if I remember right the same night he get murder he been by the relative and eat and collect a bottle of vodka and the two of them was good.”
The relative, according to the resident, operates a small business in the Mahdia which is open until early hours of the mornings some times. There are several persons, both residents said, who were at the relative’s business place and saw him until late Friday night.
A senior police source has since told this newspaper that up to late yesterday afternoon no one had been arrested for McPherson’s murder. Investigations, they said, were ongoing.
Meanwhile, Raquel McPherson told Stabroek News that her brother’s body was flown to the city some time yesterday.
At the time the woman was with police trying to sort out the issue of payment. Police, she said, were insisting that she had to stand the cost for bringing McPherson’s body to the city.
However, she stressed that since her brother was murdered and the case is a police matter then the state should be standing the cost.
“I am just trying to sort out this whole thing,” she said, “and I will be in a better position to speak about what happened to my brother tomorrow [today].”
McPherson, police had said in a press release on Saturday, was last seen alive at about 10.30 pm on Friday.