Case against the captain of ill-fated vessel further adjourned

Three peo­ple, in­clud­ing the cap­tain of the ill-fat­ed MV Bari­ma that sank on Ju­ly 18, killing more than 100 peo­ple, ap­peared in court on Mon­day, but the mat­ter was ad­journed to Sep­tem­ber 14.

The three—Kevin Price, the 40-year-old cap­tain of the ves­sel; chief mate Ron­dell Dwayne Roberts 42; and goods su­per­in­ten­dent, 33-year-old De­lon Grander­son— were fur­ther re­mand­ed to prison on Mon­day, as the court set No­vem­ber 16, 2026, for the start of the pa­per com­mit­tal pro­ceed­ings, a pre­lim­i­nary court process.

The three ac­cused men made a vir­tu­al ap­pear­ance be­fore Mag­is­trate Ravin­dra Mo­hab­ir at the Char­i­ty Mag­is­trate’s Court and were told that the pros­e­cu­tion had com­plet­ed full dis­clo­sure of its case to the de­fence.

Se­nior po­lice le­gal ad­vi­sor and at­tor­ney, Man­del Moore, told the court that all ev­i­dence and ma­te­r­i­al in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by the state had been dis­closed with the de­fence then re­quest­ing sev­en days to re­view the ma­te­r­i­al and de­ter­mine whether state­ments would be filed on be­half of the ac­cused.

Mag­is­trate Mo­hab­ir grant­ed the re­quest and gave the de­fence un­til Sep­tem­ber 14 to in­di­cate whether it in­tends to file state­ments. Should the de­fence choose to do so, the state­ments must be filed with­in 45 days, with Oc­to­ber 19 set as the dead­line.

The mat­ter will re­turn to court on Sep­tem­ber 14, when the men are ex­pect­ed to re­main fur­ther re­mand­ed.

The men have been charged with mul­ti­ple counts of mur­der fol­low­ing le­gal ad­vice from the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), Shal­i­mar Ali-Hack, SC.

The 87-year-old MV Bari­ma cap­sized on Ju­ly 18, 2026, as it made its way from George­town to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of the coun­try.

Prime Min­is­ter Mark Phillips has told a news con­fer­ence that de­spite the of­fi­cial man­i­fest in­di­cat­ing that 116 pas­sen­gers and a crew of 17 had been on board the ves­sel, the au­thor­i­ties be­lieve that 179 peo­ple in­clud­ing the crew mem­bers were on the ves­sel when it cap­sized af­ter be­ing hit by a large wave. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)