Search for missing guard ends in tragedy

"Confess or die" were the chilling words relatives of 52-year-old security guard Dane Johnson say they found scribbled in his personal notebook, just days before his body was discovered in an abandoned quarry in Tredegar Park, St Catherine.

Johnson, otherwise called 'Spice' and 'Rasta', was reported missing on September 10. His remains were found on September 12 in a bushy section of the quarry, retrieved by the police with help from the Jamaica Fire Brigade. Investigators from the Spanish Town Criminal Investigation Branch have since launched a probe. Relatives who searched the area said it was easy to miss the body in the thicket.

"Is not somewhere yuh just walk through casual," one explained. When THE STAR visited Johnson's community, relatives were gathered in his yard. The air was heavy with sorrow, but also with the weariness of days spent searching. Family members said they had barely slept or eaten since he went missing, determined to comb through every path and patch of bush.

"We searched for three days straight," another family member said. "It was only persistence that gave us closure."

They recalled climbing through thick vegetation and even venturing into bat-infested holes, desperate not to give up. The quarry itself, covered in bush and difficult to navigate, made the search even more gruelling. Eventually, a coal burner who passed through the area to tend to his kilns spotted the body and alerted the police.

Johnson's loved ones described him as a man of simple routine, travelling between work and home with little variation. His sudden disappearance, they said, was deeply out of character.

"He wasn't a man fi wander. Work and home, that was him," one relative explained.

The words in his notebook have unsettled his relatives, and they admit the meaning is unclear.

"It's like he knew something was coming," one family member said. A niece who viewed the remains told THE STAR that she did not believe the body was badly decomposed.

"The skin never break off, the head never swell. It was just the trauma to the head we could see," she said.

Johnson had been working as a security guard for more than four years. Relatives say he was known as quiet and hard-working, a man who looked forward to coming home to sit with his grandchildren in the yard. He is survived by seven children and more than a dozen grandchildren, many of whom relatives say are still struggling to understand the loss.

While the discovery of his body has brought some relief, the family insists it is not the end of their anguish. They said when they visited his work site after his disappearance, they noticed signs that troubled them, but no clear answers emerged. Attempts to speak with people in the area, they added, were met with silence.

"Nobody see nothing, nobody hear nothing. People just hold down their heads," one relative remarked.

In a country where many missing person cases go unresolved, the relatives stressed how important closure was to them.

"It harsh and it hot, but we just glad say we find the body," another family member said. "At least we can lay him to rest."

For now, the family says they are holding on to that small comfort, even as questions surrounding Johnson's final hours hang heavy in the air.

"We just want to know why," one grieving relative added.